


A Step Too Far

by Kachelofen



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-07 13:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 64,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kachelofen/pseuds/Kachelofen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian. Justin. And a baby. And not a bit of fluff in sight - anywhere.</p><p>This is a sequel to Follow Me, Follow You, but can be read on its own if you ignore the one or two references. However, if you decide to read both, you will enjoy Follow Me, Follow You more, if you read that first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

If a guy had laughed during a fuck in my pre-Justin days, I would have thrown him out on his ass and would have had a fair few choice words for him, too, but with Justin, I couldn’t help laughing along with him, it was so infectious.

“What?” I snorted, trying not to lose my rhythm as I was moving inside him.

“I just remembered their faces,” he giggled. “At the gallery. It was priceless.”

That it had been. We’d just returned from four days in Florida, where I had a bunch of meetings and he had a gallery opening for his show that was still rotating to a different city every month. My meetings went a lot better than his show, due to his issues with the people who were running the gallery. It was a personality clash of epic proportions, not helped by the fact that I couldn’t join him until the last day of our stay because I'd been stuck wining and dining clients in the evenings for the first two days. But finally, I had the evening free to check out his show and lend some moral support.

I could see that Justin had his hackles up, as soon as I entered the gallery. All afternoon, I'd been receiving messages from him about how obnoxious the gallery manager and his crew were.  ‘Pretentious pricks’, ‘arrogant assholes’ and ‘feeble-minded fuckers’ were just some of the terms he'd used. It seemed like he was trying to keep his sanity by occupying his mind with finding as many alliterations as possible.

I'd gone back to the hotel after my meeting ran late and changed into some soft cotton slacks and a cotton shirt, all in white, which wouldn’t have been out of place at a White Party. But it was Florida at the height of summer and I really didn’t feel like donning a suit. No one would be wearing a suit two days after opening night. This was Justin’s third day at the gallery, the last he was contractually obligated to attend, and it sounded like he needed some fun.

I pushed my way through the throng of people surrounding him – there were about a dozen or so – and when I got to him, I pulled him into my arms unceremoniously and kissed him.

He looked relieved, but he must have been really pissed off all afternoon because he groused at me. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry,” I said in my best pouty voice. “I was on the beach and time just got away from me. All those lovely boys to watch. I’ll be good for you later.” I raised my eyebrow in an exaggerated way and smiled winningly, stopping just short of batting my eyelids.

He blinked and then, ever the sharp one, pursed his lips disapprovingly. “You know what we said about other guys during this trip.”

I nodded obediently. “If I don’t fuck anybody else during this trip you let me top you. Twice.”

Justin shot a quick look at the group around us, seemingly embarrassed, but it was really just to check how much of an audience we had for our little performance. “I never said that,” he said in a stage whisper.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did too.”

“Baby,” he said with mock exasperation. “I said I would let you, but just because I _said_ it twice doesn’t mean that you get to _do_ it twice. It just means that I reminded you of it on the plane. If I told you twice that I'll buy you a car, that doesn’t mean that you’re getting two cars now, does it?”

“I really do need a new car. Mikey bought Ben a Jag. It’s so cool! And I still got that old BMW. And it’s not even black.”

“That’s because you wanted a silver one. It’s hardly old, baby, we only bought it last year. And you know why you can’t have another sports car. I don’t really want you to go out in Ben’s car either. You know I worry about you.”

“But I promise I’ll be more careful. I had the BMW for a year now and I haven’t totalled it yet.”

“But it’s in the garage every other week for a re-spray because you keep scratching it. If you manage six months without scratches, I’ll buy you a new car.”

I grinned inanely and kissed him with mock exuberance. “Thank you. Thank you. You’re the best.”   

“Alright, alright.” He pushed me away, laughing, and I had trouble keeping a straight face. “Now go and amuse yourself. And remember what we talked about.”

“Don’t touch the exhibits,” I said in a tired voice as if reciting it.

“And?”

“Don’t touch the waiters.”

“And?”

I gave an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t speak to anyone because the people here are really smart.”

“Good boy,” he said and kissed my cheek. “Now scamper away and let me talk to these nice people here.”

I nodded again and squeezed his ass. “Later, Daddy.”

“Later, Baby.”

I made my way through the group of people around us. Only one or two had decided not to listen in on a private conversation and had wandered away. Half of the remaining ones pretended they hadn’t been listening and looked pointedly at anything but us. The other half were staring openly with disbelieving or shocked expressions. They had to be breeders, the whole lot of them, willing to believe any old bullshit about the queers.

I walked away from them and made it just outside the back entrance before I started chuckling to myself, earning curious looks from the two or three other guests who were out there smoking. Taking a few steps away from them, I lit my own cigarette and smirked away to myself until Justin joined me ten minutes later, grinning like a loon.

It had taken us about twenty minutes until we had recovered enough so that we could go back in with a straight face. Just thinking about it now made both of us laugh still. In the end, Justin snorted indelicately as he squirted his come between us, while I came inside him and then collapsed on top of him, trembling with silent laughter. Life with Justin had never been boring and I had hopes that it never would be.

Leaning up a little while later and stroking his sweaty bangs out of his face, I said, “I have to go into work tomorrow.”

“What? I thought we were taking the day off. We’ve only been back...” He craned his neck to look at the clock on the bedside cabinet. “...four hours.”

“I know. But Ted said he has a few papers to sign. Which _could_ probably wait till Wednesday, but Richard Collins is flying in tomorrow. He has a board meeting on Wednesday and he wants everything ready. It was either meet him tomorrow or fly out to pitch to the board on Wednesday. I really don’t fancy a trip to Philly.”

“Ah well, I’ll see if Daphne wants to meet.”

“How is she?”

“Grumpy. She’s going stir crazy now that she’s on leave. She swears she’s put on ten pounds since last week and she said if she doesn’t drop this baby soon, she’ll go out and find a guy to fuck.”

I frowned in confusion. Daphne was two weeks away from delivery. Justin had been frantic before our trip to Florida, worrying that he might miss the grand event while he was away. He must have called her about half a dozen times every day we were down there.

“Apparently, sex can trigger the contractions if you’re close to the birth. The chemicals in the semen or the orgasm or something.”

I chuckled. “Did she ask you to do the honors?” That wouldn’t have surprised me, since he seemed to be expected to do just about everything else. And was quite happy to oblige.

“Ewww,” he grimaced. “Can you imagine fucking a pregnant woman?”

“I don’t really wanna imagine fucking _any_ woman.” I rolled off him and he played with the come on his chest absent-mindedly, while I lit a cigarette. “People have sex with their pregnant partners all the time. No guy would last nine months otherwise.”

“I suppose.” He sounded dubious. “Maybe it’s okay if it’s your kid and you’re, you know, straight.”

I chuckled. “Yes, being straight is definitely a requirement for that.”

“I’ll go and have a shower.” He turned to look at me and smiled. “You wanna join me?”

I blew a string of smoke into the air. “Yeah, I’ll be there when I’m done.”

He rolled towards me to place a kiss on my neck and then rolled away to get up. I watched him make his way to the bathroom. His body was more toned now that he had started working out, just enough to make his muscles more defined, but nowhere near turning him into a gym bunny. It suited him. And his ass was still as beautiful and well-shaped as it had always been. I loved that he never really tanned and that his skin was always that amazing porcelain color.

He was walking very slowly and stopped by the bathroom door, looking over his shoulder and smirking at me. The little shit knew full well that I was watching him and he also knew exactly what effect he had on me. My cock was twitching feebly already and I chuckled.

“It’s not gonna work. I will join you when I’m done smoking.”

He pouted and looked pointedly at my cock, which predictably started to make an effort to rise to the occasion when he licked his lips. Then he grinned and disappeared into the bathroom and if I decided not to smoke my cigarette right down to the filter, that had nothing to do with him. It was just healthier that way. 

 

 

 

 **PART ONE**     

Justin  had become increasingly excited and on edge over the last few weeks. When Daphne returned to Pittsburgh a year ago, they had picked up where they'd left off before he'd gone to New York. Or maybe even earlier because I could have sworn that sometimes it was just like having two teenagers around. For starters, they talked all the time. Whenever Justin went to meet Daphne, I never expected him back for at least an hour after he said he would be back. And then there were the phone calls, hours and hours of them, or so it seemed.

I let them get on with it. Daphne was ultimately preferable to any friend Justin might pick up at PIFA, thank you very much, and she was fun to be around on the occasions when I met her at the house. I worked long hours and what Justin did with his time was not my concern. Most of that time was spent painting in his studio at Britin, which was rather solitary, and Daphne was extremely busy, too, so they grabbed whatever opportunity they had to hang out.

When Justin told me Daphne was pregnant, I was surprised and a little disappointed. I had thought she was smarter than that. But as time passed, I became more and more convinced that it had been no accident. First, she got rid of the father – Luke or Larry or something – pretty damned quick. He'd been an on-again, off-again boyfriend but not because there was any great passion between them. Where I came from, we called it fuck buddies. He was only too happy to be excused from his responsibilities and not even Justin had ever met the guy, as far as I knew.

But the way Daphne went about starting to organize everything for and around the baby, made me suspect that she had planned this all along and my esteem for her increased again. I wasn’t opposed to people having babies; that was their own business. It was letting babies mess up their lives that I couldn’t quite fathom. It wasn’t as if it was any great surprise that you could get pregnant from fucking and Daphne was a doctor after all.  

Then she started roping Justin in. First, it was just shopping. It seemed like there was an extraordinary amount of stuff that needed to be bought every week. Even Lindsay, who'd never been shy about asking me to supply everything for Gus before he was born, hadn’t had a list that long. But Daphne made good money and if she wanted to spend it on the best of everything for her child, who could blame her?

Next, Justin started driving her to her doctor’s appointments and, as he was already there, they decided he might as well be part of it. He started going to all the pre-natal examinations, all the scans and all the Lamaze classes with her. Eventually, he became her official birth partner. For a while, there was an ultrasound picture stuck to our fridge with a magnet until Mrs Hanson asked for it to be removed because she was worried she might ruin it during cooking or cleaning.

So we ended up at the beginning of July with Justin being full of nervous energy in anticipation of the birth. Personally, I couldn’t see the attraction of being stuck in a room with a screaming woman for hours on end until she produced a wrinkly and equally screaming bundle of flesh covered in goo. I could just about understand it if it was your own child – although wild horses couldn’t have dragged me in there with Lindsay – but what had Justin so fascinated was beyond me. However, I didn't mind that his being tense translated into a perpetual horniness and graciously provided him with the distraction he so obviously needed – several times a day.

I told myself that the excitement would wear off eventually. Once the baby was here, things would get back to normal, except then, when they would meet up, they'd have something new to talk about and to coo over in unison. With Justin set to become the godparent, I even mentally prepared myself to step foot in a church again for the first time in six years for the christening. I mocked him endlessly for the fact that he made more fuss about this baby than there had ever been about Gus and Gus was actually my son.

When the phone rang that night at twenty past two, Justin answered it after the second ring. Normally, he could sleep through an earthquake, but recently the slightest noise woke him. It had to be the anticipation.

I was only half awake and barely registered his ‘oh, my god’ and various other exclamations of excitement. My brain said, ‘Daphne’s gone into labour’ and switched promptly back off, only briefly coming back to life when he put the phone down and got up.

“Do you want me to drive you?” I asked without even opening my eyes.

He laughed. “I think I’ll be safer on my own. At least _I’m_ awake.”

I half listened to him shower quickly and then getting dressed afterwards. He came over to kiss me goodbye and I grabbed his hand that was stroking my hair briefly. “Take a cab. I don’t want you driving like this.”

He kissed my lips. “Already ordered.” And, as if on cue, the door bell rang. “I’ll call you,” he said and dashed out of the room. I wondered for about thirty seconds if there was an appropriate wish for a birth, like ‘break a leg’ was for the theatre, maybe: ‘break water’? But then I just went back to sleep.

 

 

Even though we'd been in Miami for four days, with the weekend in between, I had actually only been away from the office for two days, the Friday and the Monday. It felt more like two weeks. I was a little grumpy from lack of sleep – flying always caused me to sleep fitfully – and even more from lack of morning sex, but Cynthia provided me with some good quality coffee and the world seemed to right itself pretty quickly after that.

I gave both, her and Ted, an overview of how the meetings in Miami had gone. I was almost certain that the clients would sign on the dotted line. One of them had already faxed the contract, as Cynthia informed me. Ted had about a dozen small matters to discuss with me and an equal amount of papers to sign. Then I had half an hour with Nicholas Parcell, our best account executive, to prepare for the Collins meeting.

There was actually no reason why I had to be in the meeting at all. It was Nicholas’ account really and he was certainly capable, but a lot of our clients just liked the personal touch by the boss and we were still small enough to accommodate them as much as possible. Quite a few of them wouldn’t have minded an even more personal touch, but that wasn’t on the cards any longer. Justin and I had been barebacking for over a year now and there was no way I would be giving that up any time soon, no matter how tempting a guy was.

Richard Collins was not a bad guy, although he was so nervous that it was difficult to see how he could run a multimillion dollar company. But he did and so we catered to his need for reassurance. We were running through the presentation again, which I had done two months ago and Nicholas had done twice since. Collins nodded his approval – again – and proceeded to ask almost exactly the same questions he had before. I let Nicholas do the honors. As always, he was very impressive. He knew all the facts and more of the details than I did and he was calm and reassuring, just what Collins needed.

About halfway through the meeting, my cellphone started vibrating in my pocket. I ignored it until it started again straight afterwards and I managed to sneak a look at the caller ID without being too obvious about it. Justin. Daphne must have pushed the kid out and, in the excitement, he must have forgotten that I was in a meeting, otherwise he would have left a message. I ignored it. It could wait half an hour.

A couple of minutes later, Cynthia entered the room. Nicholas barely lost his stride and carried on talking while she made her way over to me and bent low to speak into my ear. “Justin’s on the phone. He sounds urgent.”

I looked at her and was just about to let her know that I knew what it was about and that it could wait, when I caught the look in her eyes. Cynthia didn’t really get flustered. Only the really big things made her lose her cool – sexual harassment suits, some prick taking over her work place – and she hadn’t lost it now either. But looking at her somehow told me that she wouldn't let this go without a discussion. And if she thought it was worth it, then it probably was.

I excused myself from the meeting, citing a ‘family emergency’ and told myself that Justin had just got a little overexcited. Deep down, I probably knew even as I went into my office to take the call and to demand all sorts of sexual favors as an apology for pulling this stunt, that he would never get Cynthia to call me out of a meeting unless he had good reason. The only thing that stopped me from panicking was the fact that he was calling me himself. If he could operate a phone, how bad could it really be?

“Justin?”

_“Brian.”_

All my misgivings about being pulled from the meeting vanished in an instant. Just that one word conveyed his abject misery and impending panic as clearly as if he'd given me a ten minute explanation.

“Are you hurt?”

_“No. I’m fine.”_

Like hell you are! “Where are you?”

_“Something’s gone wrong. They made me leave the room.”_

“Where are you?”

_“I’m in reception, but I’m gonna go back up. I don’t know what to do. They wouldn’t let me stay with her.”_

I tried to stay calm. “Justin. Where are you? Which hospital?”

_“Magee’s. I told you.”_

He probably had at some stage, but what had been the likelihood of me needing to know which hospital Daphne was planning to give birth in? It wasn’t the kind of information I retained. “Stay put. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

_“It’s all right, Brian. I’m fine. I just feel so helpless. I’ll go back up and see what’s going on.”_

“You do that. I’ll find you.”

_“You don’t need to come. I’ll be fine. I feel better now.”_

Yeah, but I didn’t. “You go back up. I’ll find you.”

_“Okay. Thanks, Brian.”_

“Later.”

_“Later.”_

I quickly tidied away everything on my desk, as I would at the end of the day. Grabbing my laptop and my keys, I walked out to Cynthia.

“Do you know where the Magee Women’s Hospital is?”

“Uhm... Halket Street, I think. Yes, I’m sure it’s Halket Street. Is he alright?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Some complications during the birth.”

She frowned.

“His friend's having a baby.”

She nodded understandingly. I was tempted to ask her if she'd thought _he_ was having the baby. Justin wasn't that effeminate, in fact, I didn’t consider him effeminate at all. But there was no time for snarkiness. “Can you tell Nicholas and Collins that I had an emergency and I had to leave?”

“What do you want me to say exactly?”

“Tell them my mother died.”

 

Although I'd never been there before, the hospital wasn’t difficult to find. I'd driven past it often enough in my life, without really registering it. I didn’t even need my navigation system, which I hated at the best of times, but I had to park quite a bit away and so it had been a good forty minutes by the time I arrived in reception. A very professional and thankfully well-informed receptionist gave me instructions to the obstetrics department.

I couldn’t see Justin anywhere, so I walked up to the nurse’s station halfway down the corridor. A young woman in some frock with a hideous children’s pattern looked up and smiled. I peered at her name tag. Linda.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so. My name is Brian Kinney. I’m looking for Justin Taylor. He came in during the night with Daphne Chanders.” Keep it simple. No need to go into any of the relationships between the three of us. I was wondering what I would say if she started on any of that ‘I’m sorry but if you’re not a family member...’ stuff. I would probably have to pretend to be Daphne’s cousin or something equally preposterous. It certainly looked like I would need a cover story because her smile dimmed by several degrees.

“Oh yes, Justin,” she then said, to my surprise. I should have known that Justin was known to all and sundry after spending only eight hours in the place. He always made friends easily and women always crushed on his boyish looks. “He’s in with his child. Room 327.” She stood up to lean over the slightly higher partition that separated her desk from the visitors and pointed down the corridor. “On the right-hand side, near the end.”

I thanked her politely and contemplated that these people were a touch on the incompetent side if they just assumed that Justin was the father because he was the birth partner. But as their incompetence stretched to not questioning who I was and what I was doing here, I wasn’t complaining. This had been a lot easier than I had feared when I first arrived and couldn’t see Justin.

The door to the room was half open, so I just went in. It was a single room with an untouched bed and one of those cribs with plastic glass, which was empty. Justin was sitting in one of the two armchairs with a small bundle wrapped in a yellow blanket in his arms. When he looked up, he looked so profoundly relieved to see me, that I regretted every single minute I delayed coming here. Which was irrational because, with clearing my desk and giving Cynthia short instructions for the rest of the day, we were talking all of five minutes.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“Hey.”

Seeing the baby reminded me of the night when Gus was born. I had been pretty high and little did I realize at the time that I had just been introduced to the two people who would become the most important parts of my life. I was in complete awe of Gus and tried my hardest to hide it. If Lindsay had let me, I would have happily drifted away from the kid. Whenever I saw him, I was overwhelmed with feelings that I didn’t know what to do with. Justin was equally determined not to let me go and even though my feelings for him didn’t exactly hit me in the face like those for Gus did, they grew quickly and steadily and that never really stopped. I would always be grateful to both, Justin and Lindsay, for not letting me get away.

Stepping closer, I pushed the blanket back a little to look at a tiny round face surrounded by jet black hair.

“What’d she have?”

“A girl.”

“Uhm... are you sure this is the right one? Because this one looks white to me.”

He smiled for the first time. “It’s common for mixed-race babies to come out white. She will darken after a while.” It was said in an amused tone as if everybody knew that. “Have you seen Mrs Chanders?”

I shook my head. “There was no one out there. What happened?”

“I don’t know. Daphne said she was feeling funny and then the nurses and the doctor got all agitated and told me to leave. I didn’t want to, but they said they had to do a caesarean section and I wasn’t allowed in there when they were doing it. They made me leave. I didn’t want to. But they just pushed me out the door.”

“It’s an operation, Justin. You can’t be in the room during an operation. You have to let the doctors do their job in peace. You didn’t have a choice.”

“I suppose. Mrs Chanders had just arrived. It must have been around eleven. That’s when the visiting hours start. She said she would be here for visiting hours. And we waited. And then I called you. And after half an hour, they brought the baby out and said one of us could stay in the room with her. So I said I would and we came here and I’ve been here ever since. And it’s been well over an hour since it started. And nobody's telling me anything. Can you go and tell them that we'll pay for the best care and the best doctors? Please?”

He was babbling and that was never a good sign. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Justin. This is a UPMC hospital and Daphne works at a UPMC hospital. Believe me, she'll have the best care available. Doctors look after their own. You can’t improve on that by throwing money at them.” It was also highly unlikely that anything could be done now, as she was already in surgery. They weren't going to change the surgeon mid-cut just because I said I would pay for a better one.

“Oh. Okay.”

I ruffled his hair a bit, then smoothed it back down. “What’s she gonna call her?”

“We can’t agree. Daph wants to call her Naomi Justine. I like Naomi Rose better. That’s Daphne’s middle name.”

“She’s gonna name her kid after you?” For some reason that amused me. Women really were too sentimental. It would never have occurred to me to have Michael as a middle name for my kid.

“She just likes the name. Can you go and find out what’s going on?”

“They aren't likely to tell me anything. You’d probably have a better chance.”

“Can you find Mrs Chanders then?”

“Okay. What does she look like?”

“Uhm, black?” There was a strong hint of annoyance now, but I decided to give him some leeway for being stressed out.

“Justin.” 

“She's medium height and skinny. And she's wearing.. uhm... a lilac and purple dress. She’s probably still down on level two where the delivery suites are.”

“Okay. I’ll go have a look. Will you be okay? What are you gonna do if she wakes up?”

“I’ll just have to jolly her along for as long as possible. Daphne wants to breastfeed.”

I wasn’t quite sure what one had to do with the other, but his impatient undertone told me that now wasn't a good time to ask. I didn’t really care that much either. So I just nodded and left.

A quick conversation with Linda informed me that all the delivery suites were equipped to be small operating theatres in case anything went wrong. She directed me downstairs and even told me she would call ahead to announce my arrival. The only reason I could think of for her being so very helpful was that Daphne worked here, or at least at an affiliated hospital, and they were trying to make this as painless for her and her relations as they possibly could. They were doing a great job.

Downstairs, I couldn’t spot anybody fitting Mrs Chanders description, so I went to yet another reception desk. There was a male nurse sitting there and he watched me coming towards him with a slight, rueful smile. My gaydar pinged with a vengeance. He wasn't bad looking, but I really didn’t have the time or the inclination to check him out properly, even just visually, which was all I ever did nowadays. His regretful smile probably meant that he was aware of that.

“Mr Kinney?”

“Yes. I’m looking for Dr Chanders’ mother?”

“She's in with her daughter. Room 224. You can’t miss it. It’s the second one on the right.”

“Thank you.”

Later, I would reflect on what an arrogant bastard I was, always had been. A guy smiling at me with regret had to mean that he was sorry he couldn’t get into my pants. What else could it be? That was what I was used to. At the time, as I was walking down the corridor, I thought that if Daphne was out of surgery and in a room on a normal ward, not the ICU, then she was probably just sleeping off the ordeal. I would just take a quick look and then go and tell Justin. Knowing him, he would want to come and see for himself.

When I got to the room, the door was slightly open and I heard a noise which sounded like choking to me. I went in without knocking, thinking there was a problem and found that the noise was coming from Mrs Chanders, who was flung over the bed on top of her daughter, sobbing uncontrollably. Daphne looked asleep. There was a distinct lack medical paraphernalia, no tubes, no beeping machines, no IV lines. She might have been asleep, but her mother’s distraught behavior told me otherwise.

I was frozen in place for a moment, then I left without Mrs Chanders ever noticing me. Outside the room, I leaned back against the wall to collect myself. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How the hell was I going to tell Justin? I was torn between wanting to stay here until someone else – doctors, nurses, I didn’t give a fuck who – had had a chance to tell him and being aware that it had to be me or that I had to at least be there when he found out.

“Are you all right, Mr Kinney?” The nurse from the reception desk had come down the corridor and was looking at me solicitously. And now the rueful smile he'd given me took on a whole new dimension.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I’m very sorry. I assumed you were aware of what happened or I would have prepared you. Were you close?”

“Close enough. What happened?”

“There were complications during the birth. They tried everything during the surgery, but it was impossible. Would you like me to call someone for you?”

Standard response. I couldn’t blame him. What explanation could possibly fix this or even just make it bearable? I had to tell Justin. What the hell was I going to say?

“I need someone to come and speak to my partner, to explain. He’s upstairs.”

“The doctor is already on the way to speak to the father.”

Oh fuck! I had to get there before the doctor did. Not that I would be able to do anything, but Justin shouldn’t be on his own when he got the news. I rushed down the corridor and up the stairs. No time to wait for the elevator.

“Is the doctor here yet?” I asked the nurse, barely slowing down as I was passing.

“Dr. Cameron will be here in a moment. I’m so sorry.”

Dr _Cameron_? She had to be kidding me! Could this day get any more bizarre? But I just went on to the room and only stopped to take a quick breath outside before I went in. Justin looked up.

“Hey. Did you find her?”

“Yeah.” I went closer. “Can I hold her?”

He frowned. “Since when are you interested in other people’s kids?”

“Just for a moment.”

He nodded and passed the bundle to me. She was so light – I had forgotten how light they were. I had also forgotten how petrified I'd always been when Gus was this age. He'd seemed so small and fragile that I'd always worried about harming him in some way. It had taken me months to get really comfortable with my own kid. Of course, having Mel hovering over me all the time hadn’t helped. In a sense, this was worse, because this was being responsible for someone else’s child.

“How's Mrs Chanders? Has she had any news yet?”

“Justin.” Something in my voice must have alerted him because his eyes went wide and at the same moment there was a soft knock against the open door. The whole point of picking up the baby had been to have her away from Justin when he realized what had happened because I really wasn’t sure how he would react. People dropped things all the time when they got bad news or they fainted. He would never forgive himself if something happened to the baby because of him, however much out of his control it might have been at the time. I turned and put the child into the crib, praying to a God I didn’t believe in – especially after today – that she would stay quiet. We really didn’t need a screaming baby in all this. And she obliged beautifully.

Dr Cameron turned out to be a middle-aged, plump woman with glasses, which she took off when she entered the room. It instantly made her features look softer, most likely the effect she was going for. Justin’s eyes had shifted to her when she had knocked, but they were still wide and fearful.

“Justin,” she said and it was obvious that they had met before. “I am so sorry.” It was the first time that I believed a medical professional when they uttered those fateful words. She looked close to tears herself.

“No,” Justin said, not particularly loudly but more forcefully than I had ever heard him before. If there had been anything she could have done, she would have for that steely tone alone. “No.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could. Daphne suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. We suspect it was ecclampsia, although she showed no symptoms of that during pregnancy. There was nothing we could do.”

“No,” he said again, but already his voice was plaintive. “I don’t believe you!”

I put my arms around him from behind because he looked like he was going to attack her. But he just stood there, shaking his head. “She’s lying, Brian, make her stop. Please, please, make her stop. It’s not true. I won’t believe it. Brian...” My name came out pleadingly, as if he expected me to change reality and I wished for once in my life that I actually was Rage and that I could fix this somehow.

I wrapped myself around him, squeezing his whole body tight against mine. “She’s telling the truth. I saw her.”

“No. No. No. No....” He leaned forward as if he wanted to get away from me, but I held him upright with my arms around his middle. Eventually, he was leaning so far forward that I had no choice but to gently lower him to the floor. He fell onto his knees, put his forehead on the floor and hugged himself tight. It was the most distraught I had ever seen him. I walked around to kneel in front of him and tried to lift his shoulders up. For a few attempts, he resisted me, then he lifted his upper body and let me embrace him. There were no tears, just a violent trembling, that his arms around himself could not alleviate. But he molded himself against my body for support.

“Try to get him onto the bed,” Dr Cameron said softly. She'd come further into the room and was squatting beside us. “Do you want me to give him anything?”

“By the time you find something he isn’t allergic to, he'll be fine anyway. Could you give us a minute?”

”Sure. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Just press the nurse’s call button if there are any problems.”

It took me a while to get Justin to stand up. He had proceeded to cling to me with barnacle-like arms, but I managed to manoeuver us over to the bed and lay him down. Taking off his shoes and my own, I joined him and he squeezed me tightly. I stroked his hair, not knowing what to say. What was there to say, really? But he was only slightly trembling now and breathing deeply. I had this strange wish that he wouldn’t try so hard not to cry, even though normally that would be the last thing I would want him to do. It seemed appropriate to cry. But he didn’t.  

He released me a little and put his forehead against my chest. “Did you really see her?”

“Yeah, I did. She looked peaceful. Like she’s asleep. Her mother's with her. I was coming to tell you.” And coward that I was, I was very grateful that I didn’t have to say the words in the end.

“What am I gonna do?”

“I don’t know. It’s gonna be tough. We’ll get through it somehow.”

“Thank you for coming.”

I kissed the top of his head and continued to play with his hair. There was nothing to say. I was thinking of how long this was going to take. Justin had known Daphne practically all his life and they'd been really close. It would take months, maybe years, for him to recover, if he ever did. And I wasn’t good at seeing Justin hurting. It would be tough for both of us.

We stayed like that for maybe half an hour, until the baby started to stir and within less than a minute she let out a piercing cry. Justin was up and picked her up in seconds. For a moment, it confused her, then she continued wailing.

“She’s probably hungry,” he said, rocking her gently.

“I’ll tell the nurses.”

I put my shoes back on and went to the reception desk. Linda promised me to bring a bottle. When I got back to the room, the baby was still crying and Justin was talking to her and walking up and down. He seemed to have none of the fears that I had around babies and looked like he'd done this a hundred times before. Of course, he had babysat for Gus and Jenny a lot when they were still living in Pittsburgh.

Linda came a few minutes later with food, as promised and Justin took a seat straight away.

“Are you comfortable doing this?” she asked him and he nodded, reaching for the bottle. And then there was blissful silence.

“You’re a natural,” Linda said with a smile. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Can you get me a bib and a diaper out of Daphne’s bag?” he asked, when she had left. “It’s in the closet.”

Standing in front of the open closet, I had a strange reluctance to touch Daphne’s things. It seemed disrespectful somehow. I wondered briefly why I hadn’t had the same feeling when I was going through Jack’s stuff, selecting an outfit for his funeral. Maybe it was because I hadn’t known Daphne all that well. Or maybe I just hadn’t given a shit about Jack. Daphne I had actually liked.

“Brian?”

I picked up the bag and put it on the bed, rifling through it, trying to disturb the contents as little as possible until I located the items and handed the bib to Justin. He tried a couple of times to get it on her without removing the bottle from her mouth, until I stepped in and fixed it around her neck, tying it loosely at the back.

He looked up and smiled briefly, a barely-there smile that I would probably have to get used to for quite a while. The baby drank less than half a bottle, then Justin held her against his shoulder for a bit, rubbing her back rather than patting it, until she burped and brought up a little milk onto her bib. Watching him change her diaper afterwards, I wondered exactly how many parenting books he'd read during the pregnancy. He had her back asleep in the crib in no time and he made it look easy.

“I want to see Daphne,” he said then.

Linda promised to look after Naomi while we went downstairs. I nodded to the nurse at the reception desk on the second level - Chad, his nametag said - but as we walked past, he stopped us.

“She left.”

“Mrs Chanders?”

“Yeah, about half an hour ago.”

“What do you mean, she left? Where did she go?”

“Home, she said. Something about her husband.”

Oh well, this wasn’t something that she wanted to tell him over phone. It was understandable.

“I just want to see Daphne,” Justin said, unconcerned. It was the first time he had spoken.

“I’m sorry,” Chad said. “Dr Chanders is no longer on the ward.”

“Well, where is she?”

“She’s been taken to the morgue. We don’t usually keep... the patients in these rooms.” After they were dead, he meant. “It was just as a favor to Dr Chanders’ family. I’m very sorry. We weren’t aware that you wanted to see her before we took her away.”

“I’ll go to the morgue then,” Justin said in a determined voice and made to turn on his heels to go and find it.

“No,” I said, at the same time as Chad said, “You can’t.”

Justin looked from me to him and I nodded at Chad to continue. “There are no visitors allowed in the morgue. Strictly personnel only. I’m sorry. We can’t bend that rule even for her.”

“Brian,” Justin said, looking at me expectantly, as if he was waiting for me to wave a magic wand or more likely just some money under the nurse’s nose and miraculously get his permission. But I had no intention of doing that even if it had had any chance of success.

“You don’t want to go there, Justin. Looking at Daphne lying on a metal slab is not a memory you want to have. Trust me on this one. There’ll be a wake and a funeral. You can say goodbye then.”

He was biting his lips for a few moments and then nodded, to my intense relief. I nodded my thanks at Chad and followed Justin as he stomped back upstairs.

 

 

We waited around all afternoon. I realized that being with the baby was comforting for Justin because it gave him something to focus on other than his grief, so I just stayed there with him. For a while, he sat in the same chair as me, on my lap, with his head on my shoulder, his hands playing idly with my tie. I let him, even long after my legs had gone to sleep.

At around three, I went to the cafeteria for some food and took the opportunity to go out for a smoke. Predictably, Justin only picked at his sandwich when I got back to the room, but he drank the two sodas I bought him. There wasn’t much conversation. I remembered this from after the bashing, when he had just needed me to be there.

He fed the baby again in the evening and I started to wonder when the Chanders were going to turn up. Had Mrs Chanders even seen her granddaughter yet? But they had just lost their child. I tried to imagine what that was like but stopped that train of thought pretty damn quick. We could hold the fort for them a little while longer.

Just after seven Dr Cameron returned.

“I’m going off duty now,” she said, smiling at Justin like an old friend. “You should go home, too. We would like to keep the baby overnight, just to be on the safe side. You can pick her up tomorrow. Say around lunchtime? I’ll be here to sign the papers.”

She had gone over to the baby and smiled down at her sadly, fiddling with the blanket.

“Are you in the habit of handing out babies to just anybody?” I asked, feeling tired from doing nothing and stressed out from the day’s events. However much we had benefited from it, the incompetent, lax attitude of the place was getting to me. Was the baby even safe here? Or maybe I was just looking for a target for my low-grade anger at the fucked up situation.

“Not many fathers come to all the pre-natal appointments, so I’ve come to know Justin pretty well. I think we can dispense with IDs and DNA tests,” she said with subdued irony.

“He's not the father,” I said, just as Justin said, “I’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Well, all the medical records say he is,” she said pleasantly in response to my statement, still looking down at the sleeping child and then her head came up sharply and she said halfway between a question and a statement, “You didn’t know.” She looked at me in shock and disbelief.

She wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

The drive home was completely silent.

There had been a ten minute conversation, in which Dr Cameron tried to explain to Justin that she'd had no way of knowing that I didn’t know that he was the father. She was obviously well aware that I was his partner and that she had just revealed something to me that had the potential to wreak utter havoc. It looked very much like, in her mind’s eye, she could see a lawsuit coming on, but Justin just told her that it didn’t matter and that she shouldn’t worry about it. He even knew, and called her by, her first name – Sandra.

When she apologized to me, profusely, I just waved her off. I knew I had to get out of there before I did or said something drastic, so I left in mid-conversation with the barest of assurances that I didn’t blame her and went outside to have a smoke. Justin joined me before I had even finished the cigarette and we walked to the car without a word. He opened the window when I lit another cigarette during the drive, leaning his head on the frame with his eyes closed, letting the cool air blow in his face and hair.

I was a little shell-shocked, to say the least. All this time, I had watched Justin’s excitement over the baby with a fond indulgence, when I should have been wondering why he was so involved. I even remembered that at one point I had teased him that he was more involved than any father had ever been and he'd just laughed it off.

In my head, one thought chased another in rapid succession. There was concern for my health when I realized that he must have slept with Daphne when we were already barebacking. But that paled into insignificance compared to how betrayed I felt. This was the reason that fucking raw was such a bad idea, because you could never trust anybody completely. Never mind that the likelihood of Daphne having any diseases was slim to none, he should have told me. I had trusted him to tell me. Hell, I'd trusted him to not do it in the first place.

And then there was another emotion that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Because I couldn’t help wondering how they had accomplished it. I had visions of Justin jerking off while she waited around for him to finish. And that was just the best case scenario. Even worse was the thought of the two of them together. I was seized by a red hot feeling of jealousy so intense that I had to grip the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. All that time they had spent with each other, had schemed and planned and done who the fuck knew what, all the things they had kept from me, while I'd had no idea, like a cuckolded husband. My overwhelming feeling was that of having been a complete idiot.

I'd thought that I knew Justin, but I really had no clue. As usual, he had decided on a course of action that suited him and had gone ahead regardless of the consequences, trusting that I would just go along with it. Well, he was so fucking wrong this time. If he had spoken to me about it, I would probably have encouraged him. I was the last person to deny him becoming a father if that was what he wanted. Or had they thought I would never find out? And there was Naomi to consider as well now. Did he think he could just bring her into the house without discussing it with me?

I lasted until we entered the house and I'd shut the door.

“When were you planning on fucking telling me?” I snarled then, as he was going towards the stairs and he turned to look at me.

“I thought I did. I’m sure I mentioned it.” He sounded and looked unconcerned, like he’d forgotten to tell me my tailor had called.

 _What the fuck!?_ “Well you didn’t! I think I would remember you telling me that you were going be a dad.”

“Brian. This isn’t funny. Why are you doing this? I’m really tired.”

He turned away, but I pulled him back around by his arm. “You think I find it funny that you didn’t tell me that you fucked your best friend? Or that we should go back to using fucking condoms? Or did you use the old turkey-baster?” I tried to stay calm, but I was almost shouting now.

He moved his head back a little, surprised and taken aback by my vehemence and he frowned. Then his eyes widened. “Oh my God! You can not be serious! Oh God, no, Brian! I am not _actually_ the father. What the fuck made you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that the doctor told me and you didn’t deny it.”

He smiled wanly. “We just told everyone that because I was going to be her birth partner and she said it would be easier if the hospital thought I was the father. Then they wouldn’t be so cagey with information and I could always see the baby while she was in hospital. You thought I'm the father? I told you it was Lucas.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Apart from the sheer relief, feeling like a complete idiot didn’t even begin to cover it any longer. Luckily, Justin was in no mood to be outraged.

“Brian, I would never fuck anyone, male or female, without telling you. And I would never keep a secret like becoming a father from you. What were you thinking?”

Good question.

“It was just a ploy to make things go smoother at the hospital. I thought I told you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you thought... why did you think that?”

Because I didn’t trust him. Because I would never be completely sure of him. Because... I was a moron? Never mind suspecting him of cheating, but with a _woman_?

“Uhm...”

He cupped my face, rubbing my cheekbone with his thumb, then moved his hand to my neck to pull me down and kiss me softly.

“I’m going to have a shower. Come with me?”

 

 

In the shower, I washed his hair slowly and then took even longer to wash his body. He had his eyes closed and leaned into me whenever he could. Different apologies for mistrusting him so profoundly went through my head, but I knew that he had most likely forgotten it by now. It was insignificant compared to the rest of the day, although I was truly sorry for adding to his misery with my insane accusations.

Had I really believed he'd been fucking Daphne and then kept it from me, never mind keeping impending fatherhood from me? His fling with Caspar Richardson in New York and then his dalliance with Finn were maybe not as forgotten as I had assumed them to be. How could they be when I still thought about his time with Ian every time I heard violin music? Yeah, apparently Mr I-Don’t-Do-Jealous was a myth. I really had to get a grip on this feeling because it made me do and say things that bordered on insanity.

The thing was that Justin had options, plenty of them, and I wasn’t quite sure what kept him from taking them. I, on the other hand, only had him. There were plenty of guys out there who were offering, but that was just fucking. What Justin and I had was different and even if there might have been guys out there who were offering something like that, they weren’t Justin. I didn’t want what we had with anyone else. And that was what was so scary about this. That I had to rely on Justin to be there, to want me, to love me. I was always worried what would happen when he stopped. Because if I lost him, I would never, _never_ do this again.

Right now, he was getting hard under my ministrations, but I didn’t want to fuck him in the shower tonight, so I turned off the water and stepped out, drying him gently with a warmed towel when he followed. Then I put him to bed. He pulled me towards him and started kissing me. It was slow and languid and when I pulled away, I moved over his body and took care of every inch of it with my hands and my mouth. He was sighing and straining towards me every time I came anywhere near his leaking cock.

I was stroking myself because this was for him alone and I was intent on keeping this going for a long time and to suck him off in the end, but he pulled my head up and said quietly: “Please, I need you inside me.”

When I pushed into him, I was slow and gentle and he sighed and squeezed my waist with his legs. This was one of those days when I missed going to the baths. I could have done with a good hard fuck, or three, with anonymous hands and mouths getting me off without me worrying about them. But Justin was different from me even when he used sex as a distraction. He wanted soft and tender, wanted to feel loved and cared for, to make him feel better. I was struggling to keep up a steady slow rhythm when my cock was screaming at me to speed the fuck up. This wasn’t about what I wanted, it was about what Justin needed.

When he came, I was only a few strokes behind. He sighed a quiet ‘I love you.’ and then the tears started streaming down his face in eerie silence. I wiped away a few of them, but there was such a deluge that, after a while, I just rested my head next to his, still lying on top of him and let him wrap his arms around me tightly. I had wanted tears at the hospital, now I just wanted him to stop. This might be good for him, but I found it hard to bear, I always had. I wanted this whole fucking day to stop. Or to rewind. Only last night, we had been laughing during our fuck. I wanted that life back.

Maybe I should have been feeling guilty for bemoaning the loss of my happy home life when Justin was so much more deeply affected. But I was a selfish bastard and I reckoned it was just my way of grieving. When it came down to it, all grief was selfish because it was always about how much you hurt from losing the other person, how it affected you, how much pain you were in, even if it was just from seeing someone else in so much pain. So I couldn’t help it that I wanted a happy Justin, because I hated to see him so upset. I couldn’t help wanting my life to go back to the way it had been because I'd been happy. That was just what grief was, you bemoaned the impact the loss had on your own life. So sue me if I didn’t cope too well with Justin being distraught.

When he eventually stopped crying, I got up and got a wet towel to wipe the come off his stomach and chest. Afterwards, I spooned up behind him and he squeezed my forearms to hold him tighter.

“Everything hurts,” he said.

“I know.”

 

 

When I awoke, it was five in the morning and already light outside. Because we had gone to bed early, the curtains weren’t drawn and from where I was lying, I could see the tops of some of the trees in the yard. When I'd bought the house, I had never given any thought to what it would be like living here. It was a gesture to convince Justin that I was serious, but in the year and a half we'd lived here, it had become a retreat.

Britin wasn't far from Pittsburgh but too far for anybody to just drop in. It was that perfect domestic hell of coupledom that I had always avoided and yet it gave me a quietude I had rarely experienced before. Sometimes I wondered if I enjoyed it more than Justin did. Sure, he liked that he could work undisturbed in his studio for hours on end or swim in the pool or have all that open space, but it meant just that to him. Freedom and luxury.

To me, Britin meant a different kind of freedom. This was the only place where I didn’t have to be _the_ Brian Kinney at all times, or Brian fucking Kinney, as Mikey used to call me. Here, I didn’t constantly have to project the image of perfection or give the impression that I knew what to do in any given situation or be aloof and in control. So, I would never turn into a slob, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy not shaving or not fussing with my hair for twenty minutes every once in a while. I would never allow myself to be seen as a helpless victim, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t admit to Justin sometimes that I was at a loss what to do. And while I would never turn into a lovesick lesbian spouting schmoopy endearments, I also didn’t have to take back any endearments I did utter or any gestures that showed him how I felt about him. Because here I could be me, the other me, the one only Justin knew.

Justin didn’t feel the same way about this place because he didn’t have to hide anything. There was no other side to him that he didn’t show anybody. He was always open and honest about who he was. He was whole. Only, now he was broken, like he was before, after the bashing. But this time, there was no physical side that I could focus on, no hand to massage when it cramped, no scar to avoid on his body, no exercises to help with. After the bashing, I had concentrated on getting his body back to normal because that was something I could see, something where I could measure the progress, something I could cope with. I had left the other side of his recovery for him to deal with on his own. Now, that other side was the only side and I had no clue how to help him. I was bound to fuck this up. I had last time.

“For a few moments I thought it was all a bad dream when I woke up,” Justin said quietly. My back was to him and he was resting his forehead between my shoulder blades. He hadn’t moved since I woke up, but I'd known that he was awake.

I turned and stretched my arm at the top of his pillow until he lifted his head so I could slip it under him and he scooted closer to press against me.

“It doesn’t seem real,” I agreed and smoothed his hair down.

“I want to bring Naomi home today.”

“Here?”

“Yes. She shouldn’t be at the hospital.”

“I agree, but you can’t just take her. Even if the hospital records say so, she’s not yours. There are grandparents and aunts and uncles and even a father. I doubt they'll let you take her.”

“Daphne is... was... an only child. Lucas doesn’t care. And Mrs Chanders has too much on her plate. Mr Chanders had a stroke last year. He needs a lot of care. That’s the reason Daph moved back here in the first place.”

“Still, I think there are a lot of people in the line ahead of you.” I was thinking what would have happened if Lindsay had died during Gus’s birth. There would have been a hell of a lot of people wanting custody of him, her parents first and foremost. Even Melanie would have had trouble getting her hands on him, as the law stood, and she was Lindsay’s partner. I couldn’t see the Chanders passing Naomi on to their daughter’s best friend, even just for a few days. This was their grandchild after all.

“But if I can, if Mrs Chanders lets me, would you mind?”

“We’re not exactly equipped for looking after a baby.”

“We can swing by Daphne’s apartment and get what we need.”

Uh-oh, he had been thinking about this in way too much detail. I could see what was happening here. Naomi was his connection to Daphne and he couldn’t bear to give that up. “It’s not the same as babysitting, Justin. There’s a lot more involved.”

“I did it before. Remember when Lindsay was sick when Gus was a baby and I stayed with them so Mel could go to work? I was there for three days.”

“Yes, you and everyone else. Debbie was practically living there, too. Even Michael was there.” Although I was sure Michael had only been there because he'd wanted to make sure that Justin didn't become too entrenched in my life through Gus. This was in the days when he still considered Justin an interloper.

“I’m not a child anymore. I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s not a good idea. If we take her home, you’ll get used to her and then you won’t want to give her back.” Jeez, now he had me doing it, too, talking about her as if she were a stray kitten that needed a good home, not a child.

“Please, Brian.”

Fuck! He didn’t often ask me for anything outright, because in general he didn’t need my permission to do what he wanted. When he did ask, I usually felt compelled to say yes. And I could see how set he was on his idea. If I said no, he would probably just take the baby to his mom’s house or to Daphne’s.

“If the Chanders ask you to help them out, we can take her till after the funeral.” God, the things this guy could get me to agree to!

“Okay.” 

I closed my eyes and tried to drop off to sleep again, but Justin had other ideas. In fact, he had quite a few of them and we spent more than two hours fucking. Well, it wasn’t really fucking, too soft, too slow, but it wasn’t making love either, as Justin always liked to call it. It was trying to forget, pure and simple, a distraction, where the focus was on drawing it out for as long as possible, on feeling rather than thinking.

I was just glad that there was something I could do for him.

 

 

It wasn’t one of Mrs Hanson’s days to come in, so I went downstairs, after about another hour’s sleep and a shower, to start the coffee. I didn’t usually have breakfast at home on workdays and I wasn’t sure if Justin would eat anything, so I just took my coffee into my home office to call Cynthia and tell her that I wouldn't be in the office for the rest of the week. Being who she was, she asked me outright what was going on and I told her.

“I’ll also have to take a day off next week for the funeral.”

We changed some meetings around and I was already beginning to wonder why I was staying home in the first place, when there was nothing I could do to help. The simple answer was that I didn’t want Justin to be on his own. If he chose to bury himself in his studio, I could always work in my home office, but I wanted to monitor him for a bit. Of course, he was a grown man now and didn’t need looking after, nor was he in any way fragile that I had to worry that he might crumble. I just wanted to fucking be there for him and the very fact that the idea made me uncomfortable told me that it was probably the right thing to do.

About forty minutes later, I got a phone call from Ted, asking me how I was and if there anything they could do. I knew ‘they’ meant the family and told him to keep his mouth shut. We would inform everyone in our own time. I especially didn’t want Jennifer to find out this way. She had known Daphne practically since she and Justin were small children and I didn’t know when Justin would get round to telling her. But I didn’t need to have worried because when he came into my office later, he told me he'd spoken to his mom and that he would meet Mrs Chanders at the hospital in an hour.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. I’ll come with you anyway. Might as well, since I’m not going to work.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

 

 

At the hospital, we walked straight up to the ward and were directed to the nursery at the end of the corridor. We were asked to wash our hands and wear a hospital frock over our clothes and I tried not to make a fuss. I was only here to observe so I didn’t quite see the point, but Justin’s earnest look kept me quiet.

Naomi was sleeping in her crib. It was warm in here, so she was no longer swaddled in a blanket and we could see her jet-black hair, which was still plastered to her head. I watched in fascination when she moved her tiny hand a little in her sleep. It was always the little fingers and fingernails that took me by surprise, so perfect. She already seemed a little darker to me and it suited her, made her look healthy.

We had only been there a few minutes when Dr Cameron turned up, almost at the same time as Mrs Chanders. Mrs Chanders was a short woman, about Daphne’s height, and she was very slim and stood very straight. She seemed tense to me, which under the circumstances was only to be expected. As it was, she was holding it together pretty well. Justin made the introductions.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said and shook my hand in a firm and warm handshake. I was relieved that she seemed so practical and down to earth. Well, what else could she have been? Daphne had to have got her drive and good sense from somewhere.

She went to pick up Naomi and I saw Justin’s face fall. He really was invested in this child and I could see, if not trouble, then at least more heartache ahead.

“Naomi has a touch of jaundice,” Dr Cameron said, when Mrs Chanders had settled herself with the baby in the armchair. “It’s quite common in infants and nothing to worry about. We’ve already given her some phototherapy this morning, but her case is light and I would still be happy for her to go home today.”

I had no idea what she was talking about and it must have shown because she added, speaking directly to me. “Jaundice is caused by elevated levels of bilirubin. It occurs in about 70% of all births and that’s why she’s a slightly yellow color. It should clear up on its own, but because she won’t be breastfed, we would ask you to bring her in every couple of days for phototherapy. We basically just shine a light on her for half an hour and that should take care of it.”

Okay, so Naomi looked darker because she had jaundice, not because her skin had darkened. What really concerned me here was the way Dr Cameron seemed to assume that it should interest me or even that I would be bringing the child back for therapy. That was not going to happen. I refused to get involved in her care.

“Can we decide where she’s going first before we plan on bringing her back here?” It might have come out with a little more sarcasm than intended because both, the doctor and Mrs Chanders, looked at me in surprise and then questioningly at Justin. He blushed slightly.

“Uhm... Olivia and I discussed it this morning and we decided that Naomi should come home with me... with us.”

He was right the first time. If she came to Britin, she'd be coming with him, not us. I shot him a deadly look that told him that he should have discussed it with me as well, while the women looked at me with matching frowns.

“Is there a problem?” Dr Cameron asked finally.

“No. No problem,” Justin said quickly. “I’ve discussed it with Brian and we agreed. We just weren’t sure at the time if Olivia would have any objections.”

Mrs Chanders looked at me. “I have an invalid husband, Mr Kinney. And with the preparations for the funeral and everything, I just can’t care for her at the moment. And it’s what my daughter would have wanted.”

“It’s usually the father that the child gets released to anyway,” Dr Cameron helpfully supplied.

Mrs Chanders looked at her and because I was watching her, I could see that she knew that this wasn’t the case here, but all she said was, “Quite.” in a slightly terse voice. At least Daphne hadn’t taken the deception as far as her parents.

I was convinced that the good doctor would cotton on now, but she just looked between all of us for a while and then shrugged. “I’ll get the papers ready then.”

Justin took my hand and squeezed it. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey, maybe an apology, but I knew he also wanted me to shut up. So I did. I had agreed that Naomi could come home with us and I wasn’t going back on my word just because I had never expected to have to go through with it in the first place. Maybe it was what Justin needed, a few days with the baby, so he wouldn’t have time to sit around and brood. I was just worried about what would come after.

“The funeral has been arranged for Monday,” Mrs Chanders said, just as Naomi gave a loud cry. “I’ll just feed her and then you can take her. Are you sure you’re all right with this, Mr Kinney?”

“Sure,” I said resignedly and excused myself. I needed a smoke.

Justin came outside as I was just finishing my cigarette.

“So you knew that we were picking up the baby,” I said calmly. It should have been obvious to me by the fact that he'd insisted on taking the jeep to come here. At the time, I had thought that it was just wishful thinking on his part. Not in a million years had I expected the Chanders to agree to Justin taking the baby with him and I'd conceded on the car issue because I hadn’t wanted to be the one to deflate his hopes.

He nodded. “Olivia asked me when I spoke to her on the phone this morning. Mr Chanders is really not very well and this whole thing has thrown him back a bit more.”

“And you didn’t feel like sharing this with me?”

He looked away from me over the parking lot for a few moments, then back at me and said earnestly, “I have to do this, Brian. I feel like I’m letting Daph down if I don’t do this. I’m asking for your support.”

“No, you’re not. You’re asking me to shut up and put up. I didn’t realize that to you support means you do whatever the fuck you want without telling me and I just follow blindly along. It ends here, Justin. I want full disclosure. What you’re planning. What you arrange with other people. What your long-term plans are. Because I have a strange feeling that we're going to have a problem.”

My voice was still calm, but he knew full well how annoyed I was. It was my calm-before-the-storm voice. He bit his bottom lip nervously for a while and then took a deep breath. “I want to take Naomi home today. We need to go to Daphne’s apartment and pick up some stuff and then come back here to get her.” He paused, but when I just raised my eyebrows, he continued. “I want to keep her for as long as possible.”

“She’s not yours to keep, Justin.”

He sighed. “You know the last thing that Daphne said to me before they pushed me out of the room?... _Look after the baby for me._ ” His voice broke a little on the last part and I stretched my arm out to pull him close to me.

“I know this is hard for you, but keeping the baby is not the answer. You’ll never get to keep her permanently. There are too many other people involved and you're just the best friend. And even if you somehow manage to get to keep her, it wouldn’t be fair on the baby because you would just be using her as a crutch to get through your grief.”

He pulled away from me in indignation. “That’s not true. Daphne wants me to do this and I love Naomi. I’ve loved her since before she was born.”

God, sometimes I hated to be the voice of reason. It was such a thankless job. “She has a father. Does he even know what happened?”

“Lucas? You can’t be serious! He hasn’t bothered since Daphne got pregnant. And now he suddenly has rights?”

“It may not be fair or right, but he _is_ the father and, by law, he has _all_ the rights. You have to tell him. Or the Chanders have to tell him. You don’t want Naomi to settle down somewhere and then one day, this guy turns up and takes her away. That would be worse than him taking her now. You can’t fight this. It’s the law.”

“Fuck the law.”

“Justin.”

“Yeah, alright,” he conceded reluctantly. “I know you’re right, okay? Can we go now?”

I shrugged and followed him to the car.

Daphne’s place wasn’t far from the hospital and when we got there, Justin unlocked the door – with a key that was on his key ring.

“You have a key to her apartment?”

“I’ve always had it. Since she moved back to Pittsburgh.”

“And did she have a key to Britin?”

He stopped to look at me. “Of course not. I don’t live alone. I would have asked you first.”

I had to take his word for that because I was beginning to think that there were a lot of things that he never told me or asked my opinion about. Although, realistically speaking, other than not telling me about his agreement with Mrs Chanders from this morning, he hadn’t really withheld any information that I absolutely needed to know. It wasn't really my concern that he had a key to  Daphne’s place or that he was named as the father in her medical records. That was the kind of information that I would ordinarily just listen to and most likely forget. It was just that suddenly trivial things had become more significant.

It wasn’t his fault either that being named the father had unexpectedly catapulted him into a position of responsibility for the baby or that his closeness to Daphne was suddenly making me uncomfortable. As long as he wasn’t the actual father and he hadn’t given Daphne a key to anywhere I lived, I had no right to complain.

The only people who had keys to our house were Mrs Hanson and Jennifer Taylor. When we moved to Britin we'd agreed that we didn’t want anyone dropping in on us unexpectedly and had never offered keys to anyone. After a while, we thought it prudent that someone should be able to get into the house if we were both away from Pittsburgh and we'd decided on Jennifer. Not only would she not abuse the privilege, she was also such a WASP that her benchmark for what was sufficient reason to actually use the key would probably be far higher than ours. I didn’t think she even carried the key with her. It was safely locked away in her condo somewhere, for emergencies only.

I'd never been to Daphne’s apartment, but Justin had spent a lot of time there and I would have expected him to be reluctant to go in under these circumstances. He didn’t hesitate for a second, just stomped into the place and started piling up stuff by the front door, while I was still looking around. Justin had two modes for when he was upset. One was quiet misery where he would mope in a corner somewhere and nothing could cheer him up. The other was a flurry of activity which distracted him from whatever was upsetting him. He was right in the middle of that one.

The apartment was very much like Daphne, quirky, seemingly chaotic and airy. There were strange color schemes and unusual furniture and everything looked extremely comfortable and relaxing. On the desk, there were four photographs, one of Mrs Chanders with a tall man, most likely Daphne’s father, one of an elderly black woman, whom I assumed to be a grandmother or an aunt and one of Daphne with a blonde girl, taken some years ago. But my eyes were drawn to a picture of Daphne and Justin together, a fairly recent one, with both of them sitting on a couch with their heads back a little in laughter.

Suddenly, it hit home how much Justin had lost. It wasn’t just the future that they would never have together now, it was also the past, all the shared memories, all the tiny moments that he was the only witness to now. I had known Michael for more than half my life. If I had lost him, a large part of my life would be irrevocably gone. There were hundreds, no, thousands of small moments that we'd shared between us, when it had been just us. There was no way to ever replace that.

“Can you help me take the crib down?” Justin said from the doorway.

“What for? We only need a bed for a few days. That basket thingy will do.”

He hesitated.

“Justin. We're not dismantling a crib to take it to Britin, only to take it somewhere else in a few days. It’s ludicrous.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Okay. Can you take some of this stuff to the car then?”

“Sure.”

I picked up various bits he'd assembled by the door to put them in the back of the jeep. It took three trips because everything was just thrown together and not properly packed and there were enough diapers and clothes to last a month. When I returned after the last trip, Justin was sitting at the desk, looking through some papers.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Just looking for something.”

“You can’t do that. For fuck’s sake, don’t you have any sense of privacy at all? That’s her parents’ job.”

“Daphne wouldn’t mind. And anyway, I’m looking for Lucas’ number, since you want me to contact him.”         

I just shook my head in frustration and looked out the window until he was done. Would I be like this if it was Michael? Or would I respect Debbie’s right to handle his affairs? Probably the latter because I would most likely be on an extended bender. And truth be told, Mrs Chanders seemed happy enough for Justin to handle things for now, which was worrying in itself. I didn’t want him to expect this to carry on and then be devastated when she took over.

When he was ready, he put some papers inside his jacket and then locked up behind us. Of course, he had a key to Daphne’s car, too, so we transferred the car seat to the jeep. On the way to the hospital, we stopped at a supermarket where he bought enough baby formula to last a month and then I was waiting outside the hospital for him to come out.

I still wasn’t convinced that we were doing the right thing, for Naomi or Justin. I understood that he was pretty much set on keeping the girl, but I also knew that the chances of that were next to non-existent. Practically anybody in Daphne’s or even Lucas’ family had more claim to her than he had. He would get hurt, even more than he already was, but it was preferable to me being the one doing the hurting. I refused to think about having to do that.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

When we returned home on Wednesday afternoon, it was with a screaming baby. She'd been restless when Justin had brought her out of the hospital. He'd started to climb into the backseat after he'd strapped the car seat in, but I had refused to start the car until he sat in the front with me. There was no reason why she needed someone peering at her every second of the journey. If he didn’t get out of this over-protective hovering, we would be in even more trouble than we already were. By the time we'd finished that argument, Naomi was crying, but she calmed down during the drive, a phenomenon I remembered from Gus’s infant days, and then she started screaming again as soon as the car engine was switched off.

The day went rapidly downhill from there. I brought the baby stuff in and distributed it at various places in the house, the guest bedroom, the en suite bathroom, the kitchen. The folded buggy I left in the hallway. What the hell, did we need the buggy for? It wasn’t as if we were likely to take a stroll down Liberty Avenue with the kid over the weekend. 

Afterwards, I went into my home office and called Cynthia to let her know that I wouldn’t be in on Monday either and then started to do some work. Justin came in two hours later to complain that I'd put the bassinette, as he called it, into the guest room. He wanted it to be in Gus’s room, which was the closest to the master bedroom. I refused. Nobody, except Gus, slept in his room, even temporarily. We'd brought the baby monitor and that would have to do. It wasn’t as if we could hear her in Gus’s room anyway, because the walls and doors in the house were really thick. There was also a desk in the guest room, which could be used as a provisional changing table. Justin yielded reluctantly and flounced out of the room.

In the evening, Jennifer turned up, apparently not unannounced, although I hadn’t been aware. I didn’t mind that. She helped Justin bathe the baby for the first time and took plenty of pictures. After the bath, she came into the lounge with Naomi in her arms and settled in one of the armchairs, while Justin was preparing a bottle. Jennifer’s eyes looked red-rimmed and I was again reminded of how long Justin had known Daphne. They must have been round each other’s houses all the time when they were children.

“He’s set on keeping her, you know that, right?” Jennifer said quietly.

“I noticed,” I grumbled, turning the TV down a bit more. “He’s got no chance.”

“I don’t think the Chanders can take her. I know that Olivia told Daphne that she wouldn’t be able to help her out much with the baby. Paul needs a lot of care.”

“They could hire a nanny.”

“True,” she said and fussed with the baby a little. Now that she was clean, Naomi turned out to be quite a beauty. She even rivalled Jenny, who was the most gorgeous child I'd ever laid my eyes on. Naomi’s hair was jet-black and straight and there was a lot of it. I saw her eyes open for the first time and they were dark blue, but everything about her, except for the colors, resembled Daphne.

“There's a father as well,” I said.

“Yes. A bit of an unknown factor,” Jennifer murmured, engrossed in the child. She was already behaving like a besotted grandmother. Great.

“Well, he wouldn’t be if someone told him what’s going on.”

Jennifer’s head came up. “He doesn’t know?”

“As far as I know.”

Justin came in with a bottle, which he deposited next to his mother on the side table together with a terry cloth.

“You haven’t told Naomi’s father what happened yet?” she asked with a frown.

Justin shot me a scathing look as if I had sicced his mother on him for my own nefarious purposes. Well, maybe I had been looking for an ally and it seemed like I'd unexpectedly found one.

When Justin said he hadn’t been able to contact him – after a single phone call apparently revealed that his phone had been turned off – Jennifer made it quite clear that she thought that was nowhere near good enough. In the end, Justin agreed to let me handle it and pushed the paper with the contact information at me in a way that left no doubt about his displeasure. I went into my office and called Cynthia who was still at Kinnetik, picking up the slack my absence had left. She would have a better idea how to go about finding this guy. After that, I just stayed in the office.

By Thursday afternoon, I'd started wishing that I'd gone into work. Justin was slowly driving me up the wall with his fussing over the baby. Every time she made the tiniest noise in her sleep, he would jump to attention and the rest of the time he seemed distracted. Even when we were fucking he was focussed on getting us off as quickly as possible. I'd never minded hard and fast before, but I hated feeling that he was just trying to get it over with or, worse, that he was doing it to placate me. He was probably just worried that Naomi would start crying in the middle of it.

In general, I just hated the knowledge that we were heading for disaster. I knew that he would break down as soon as Naomi would leave the house next week. And that our relationship might not survive if she didn’t. Either way, I was just passing the time until then.

Jennifer came every day after work and her no-nonsense approach was like a breath of fresh air. Justin always seemed calmer after she left. On Friday, he took Naomi to the hospital for her phototherapy and returned after four hours, telling me he'd been to see the Chanders to introduce her to her grandfather. That, at least, seemed sensible and a small bit of progress to me.

I was relieved when Michael turned up on Saturday after lunch and stayed until late in the evening. He somehow managed to bridge the gap between Justin’s overzealous approach and my complete refusal to engage. He held the baby and talked childcare with Justin and then smoked some weed with me afterwards.

“What’s going to happen with the baby?” he asked after a while.

I shrugged and told him about the situation with the Chanders and that Cynthia had found out that Lucas Pirie was in Columbia of all places and not expected back until Monday. Apparently, he lived down there, at least temporarily, while he worked on some project during a gap year between pre-med school and medical training. It also turned out that the guy was twenty-two. None of that made me feel any better.

“So you might have to keep her for longer?”

“I don’t think so. Legally, Justin doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Can you imagine her staying here and then one day someone comes along with more rights and takes her? That would be bad for everyone.”

“So you would have to make it legal. Mel managed it somehow with Gus.”

“Because that was what all the parties involved agreed on.”

“Well, if the Chanders are okay with it and this Lucas guy is, too, it might be possible.”

I gave him a withering look.

He turned his head, which was resting on the back of the couch, to look at me for a while. “You don’t want her, do you?”

“She’s not mine, nor his.”

He nodded. “Neither is JR.”

“And that would be the reason that she’s not living here.” The whole family always had this proprietary attitude towards Gus and Jenny, as if we were all bringing them up together and to some extent that was true, but Gus would always be mine and Jenny would always be Michael’s. No equal treatment policy could change that. At least, not in my eyes.

“Does Justin know?”

Well, he should. We had talked about it some months ago on this very couch. I distinctly remembered how we'd lain here after a very satisfying evening, both of us naked. It had been pure mischief that had made me ask him if he ever thought about fathering a child himself. His measured reaction had told me that he had thought about it at some length.

He'd said that he wanted a child one day, but that he wasn’t sure how possible that was. Of course, we had the money to pay a surrogate mother, but he didn't want to be a full-time father, nor did he think he would have time for that with his painting. And the chances of him finding a situation similar to mine, where he would be able to be part of the child’s life with the mother bringing it up, were slim. Strangely enough, he'd said he had always thought it might be possible with Daphne, but she was already pregnant by the time we talked about it.

When he'd asked me how I felt about it, I had made it clear that I couldn't see myself being a full-time dad either, nor did I feel that I would ever be ready for that. That was too much domesticity for my taste. It wasn't something I had ever considered possible, nor had I ever aspired to it. Lindsay once asked me if I'd ever thought that she and I and Gus would have been a possibility and I told her no. It wasn’t just because I didn’t feel about Lindsay that way or even just because I was gay, it was because I never wanted to play happy families and that hadn’t changed. Justin knew that. Or, at least, he should.

I didn’t tell Michael any of that.

“We talked about it. Anyway, it’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“That after the weekend, Naomi will be living somewhere else and Justin will be devastated.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t started grieving yet. That'll be tough.” He put his arm out and ruffled the back of my hair a bit. “Just cut him some slack and you’ll be fine.”

I doubted it. Michael had no idea how hard it was for me to watch Justin being upset. Having to sit back helplessly and not being able to do something to fix it always tore me apart. There was only so much of that I could take and after that, I would fuck up somehow and Justin wouldn’t be there to fix it. And what worried me the most wasn't the tears and the silences, it was the fear that even if I did everything right and was the perfect partner, in the end, I would simply not be enough to catch him.

 

 

We had a long discussion on Sunday because Justin wanted to take Naomi to the wake in the afternoon. I had visions of a screaming baby amidst grieving family members and argued vehemently against the idea. Again, I had unexpected support from Jennifer, who told him on the phone that it was really not appropriate to take a baby to a wake. Then she almost negated her good work by telling him she wouldn’t be able to babysit because she, too, would be there. Finally, we decided on Debbie, who said she would be delighted as long as we dropped Naomi off at her house.

Predictably, Justin wanted to take everything but the kitchen sink to Debbie’s house, or preferably everything _and_ the kitchen sink, but in the end, we agreed on the bare necessities. It was surprisingly easy to get him out of her house, although that was mainly Debbie physically pushing him out the door.

At the funeral home, I put my hand on his arm before he could get out of the car. He looked at me a little warily. Maybe I had put a spanner in his works too many times over the past few days.

“This is for you, Justin,” I said gently. “It’s for you to say goodbye. Don’t think about the baby or anything else. Think about Daphne and about saying goodbye to her.”

He took my hand and held it for a few moments. His eyes were the softest blue and he smiled sadly. “I love you... and sometimes I forget how much you love me.”

I looked away and nodded, relieved that he had said it for me. This emotional stuff never seemed to get any easier for me. “Well, try not to.”

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles.

Inside, they had prepared the biggest hall for Daphne’s wake. There was an attendant directing the guests and he showed us to some seats near the front, amidst the family. The room was already filled to capacity. Justin said hello to Mrs Chanders and a man in a wheelchair who didn’t react. He was sitting slightly slanted to the right and when we walked forwards, I noticed that he was strapped in. I could barely recognize him as Daphne’s father, the same man as in the photo in her apartment. He was in worse shape than I'd imagined and I could see how Mrs Chanders had a lot to cope with already.

Justin took my hand and pulled me towards the open casket in the front. I really didn’t want to look at the body, nor did I think that handholding here was a particularly good idea since I knew there would be a full catholic funeral service tomorrow. The last thing Justin needed was to be thrown out of here. But it wasn’t about me and if this was what he wanted, I would supply it.

Daphne looked asleep. They had straightened her hair like she'd been wearing it in recent years and she was beautiful. But it wasn’t Daphne. There was no zest, no sparkling eyes, no attitude. For the first time since she died, I was struck by how much **_I_** would miss her. Although I never saw much of her, she'd been a constant in my life since I met Justin. I remembered how she'd told me that she was never getting married or that it was all my fault that Justin had run away to New York. Or how her voice had sounded when she said, _‘what if he gets hurt?’_ during the pink posse episode. She had loved Justin steadily all her life. There was no doubt about that.

And for the last year she'd been at our house at least twice a week. Usually, we had chatted for a while when I'd come home from work before she set off home or, as her pregnancy progressed, Justin had driven her home. She was one of the smartest women I'd ever come across and funny, too. I'd wanted to remember her like that, laughing and joking and opinionated, but at least this was ultimately better than the scene at the hospital, with her mother flung over her body. I resolved to never tell anyone about that. Especially not Justin. But, yes, I realized suddenly that I would miss her, independently of Justin, just for being who she had been: one hell of a woman.

Justin was frozen in place, his eyes fixed on her face. He'd gone very still. It wasn’t just that he was silent or that he didn’t move, it was as if he had just _stopped._ I could sense that he'd gone to that place inside of him where no one could follow. He had done that a couple of times after the bashing. In those days, I could generally reach him, even if I was the only one; it had been the main reason Jennifer had left him with me. But sometimes, he'd just disappeared, had withdrawn into himself and stopped communicating in any way, no words, no eye contact, no reactions. I'd hated it then and I hated it even more now when I was used to communicating with him more.

I felt a little uncomfortable, standing here in front of all these people, holding his hand. It was strange because I'd done far more intimate things in front of far more people with him. But I felt exposed on his behalf, as if this was more private than anything else he'd done in front of an audience. I squeezed his hand gently.

After a while, he took a deep breath. Then, there was an almost sob and he said quietly in a desolate voice, “What am I gonna do?”

I wasn’t quite sure if he was saying it to me or to Daphne. I squeezed his hand again and he turned to look at me as if he expected me to fix this for him. If it had been possible I would have, just to banish that look of sheer despair in his eyes. “One day at a time,” I said quietly.

He managed a short, grateful smile and we took our seats. I felt like an intruder, sitting in the second row amongst the family, who didn’t know us, but the Chanders wanted Justin to sit here and I wasn’t going to leave him on his own.

I had expected this to be the more bearable part of the funeral, but it turned out to be fucking awful. It was obvious that the speaker, a man of indeterminate profession or denomination, hadn't known Daphne at all, because I couldn't recognize the woman I'd known from the person he described. Then, there was a steady procession of her friends and family, who got up to speak about her and would invariably get choked up or even break down in tears. It was painful to watch. And everyone was so solemn and talked about her in such a serious way that I wanted to stand up and tell them all what a fun-loving person Daphne had been and how she would have hated this. If I knew that, then surely all these people, who purported to have been her friends, would know that, too.

Mrs Chanders turned around from her seat in the row in front of us and asked Justin if he wanted to say a few words, but he just shook his head. I was glad about that. When it was all over, we talked to Jennifer for a bit, who'd been seated near the back, and Justin greeted quite a few other people, mainly old school friends and some of Daphne’s colleagues. Dr Cameron was there as well and the blonde woman from the photograph in Daphne’s apartment, whom Justin called September. I kept in the background throughout, just nodding during the introductions and listening in. Most of them regarded me with more or less open curiosity, but it wasn’t as if being watched had ever fazed me.

Justin got antsy after about an hour and we paid our respects to the Chanders to tell them we were leaving.

“You will be at the service tomorrow?” Daphne’s mother asked.

Justin nodded.

“There will be a small reception at the house afterwards, just for the family. Could you bring Naomi?”

I could feel Justin tense beside me and he hesitated.

“Of course, we will,” I said. “We won’t bring her to the service, but we’ll bring her by afterwards.”

“That would be great. It’s time for the family to meet her. I'm ever so grateful for what you’ve done for her.”

Justin gave one of his false cheerful smiles and then it was all over. The sun outside seemed impossibly bright all of a sudden, after the dim funeral home. In the car, I remarked how terrible the whole afternoon had been and other than agreeing on that score, Justin didn’t say much.

He spent all evening fussing over the baby, just holding her, even after she fell asleep and he came to bed well after midnight. I hadn’t exactly been waiting for him, but I wasn’t asleep either.

He turned his pillow a few times and punched it some more, for good measure, before he lay down. I wasn’t quite sure what or who the target of his mood was, but he left me in no doubt a minute later. “So, it looks like you’re gonna get your wish tomorrow after all.”

Well, there went my fuck for the night. “Stop being a princess. You knew this was going to happen. I’ve just been pointing out the obvious all along.”

“Well, you never made much of an effort to support me either.”

“Because I knew it wasn’t your choice to make. Or mine, for that matter.”

“Maybe, if you hadn’t made it so obvious that you don’t want Naomi, Olivia would've been happier to leave her with me.”

I knew he was just upset and lashing out at the only target available, but it didn’t make it any easier to bear. I would have preferred to alleviate his mood by fucking or even just holding him and talking to him, instead of bearing the brunt of his frustration. But it wasn’t to be. So I got up and put on some sweatpants.

“Where are you going now?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Running away?”

“Finding a place to jerk off since it’s obvious that nothing like that is going to happen with you tonight.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not in the mood for fucking tonight. I seem to have one or two other things on my mind.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

I left the room before I could say something else I would regret. When I shut the door, I could hear a thump against it and knew he had thrown a pillow. I grabbed a bottle and my cigarettes from the lounge downstairs and sat in the warm night air in the garden for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until I heard the baby cry, that I went into the den to continue smoking and drinking until I passed out.

 

 

I paid for my night on the couch the next morning. I awoke when I heard Justin in the kitchen, preparing a bottle and talking to Naomi non-stop. It was obvious how much love he had for the child, just by the tone of his voice. When there was no smell of coffee after about fifteen minutes, I assumed that we would continue today as we had left off last night.

Every single bone in my body apparently found it necessary to remind me that I was really getting too old for sleeping in any other place than a bed. On top of that, I had a thumping headache. I made my way to the bathroom upstairs where I took some Advil and had a long shower. By the time I came out, the headache had abated and after a careful shave, I felt human again. Not quite so old then, that I couldn’t bounce back quickly enough.

Justin was just coming into the bedroom when I came out of the bathroom. He couldn’t have expected me to be here because he startled a little. There was a quick glance down my body, which was still only covered with a towel slung around my hips, almost as if he didn’t want to, then our eyes met. I could see his desire and my body reacted accordingly even though I knew that he didn’t always act on his desires when he was angry. It was involuntary. Whenever Justin looked at me like that, I got hard.

There was no way I was going to make the first move. He would notice my hard-on, but I wouldn't leave myself open to rejection. He hesitated for a few of seconds and then he took just one step towards me, his eyes fixed on mine. That was enough. I covered the remaining distance with two long strides and then he was in my arms and we were kissing as if we hadn't done it in twenty-four days rather than twenty-four hours.

I couldn’t seem to get close enough and I tried to bridge the recent distance between us by shoving my tongue down his throat. His hands got rid of the towel around my hips with a swift tug and then he was down on his knees. I was rewarded for allowing him to stop kissing me by feeling his mouth on my cock just a few seconds later. There was nothing hotter than looking into Justin’s eyes when he had his lips round my cock. I always liked to watch guys sucking me off, but with Justin there was something else there, apart from lust and desire, something deeper that always made it hard for me to last a reasonable amount of time and when he stroked and pressed on that sensitive area just behind my balls, I came for what felt like hours.

He got up and kissed me again and there was only the barest taste of me in his mouth, I'd been that far down his throat. I pulled on his clothes and got him out of them in record time. My refraction period was still minimal, at least for first two fucks and I was thankful for that because keeping up with Justin would have been difficult otherwise. When we ended up on the bed, he pushed and shoved me gently until he was on top of me. He rode me long and hard and I could only moan my approval.

For a long while afterwards, he was just lying on top of me, collapsed in a heap. This was the beauty of barebacking, that there was no need to separate because there were no condoms to worry about.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, drawing on my chest with his fingers.

“I’m not the enemy, Justin.”

“I know. But it’s hard for me that you’re not quite an ally either.”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not about what you want or even what Daphne might have wanted. Or what I want.“

“But you could try.”

“But I won’t. I’m not going to start a long drawn-out battle that we can’t win.” I didn’t mention that I didn’t want to win it either. There was no point in starting _that_ discussion if it would be superfluous by this afternoon. I was a coward really. I didn’t want to tell him that I wasn’t on his side because I didn’t want to become the focus of his anger when it all went to hell later. When the baby would go to the Chanders after the funeral, I wanted to be there to comfort him. He wouldn't allow me to do that if he knew that I was glad of the outcome.

He nodded and stretched out beside me, his body plastered against me. Apparently, we had reached a truce.

 

 

The funeral was predictable. The priest droned on about God’s will and little else. There was a lot of getting up and sitting back down, a lot of singing and praying and it was all horribly familiar. The only thing that was different from any other funeral was Daphne’s photograph on the casket in the front. I couldn’t help wondering if anybody really found solace in this pointless exercise. We were the only non-family here and, by the looks of it, the only ones who weren’t religious. Probably the only ones who were gay, too, although I had my doubts about the priest.

Even Justin was just going through the motions, always a little step behind everybody else, silent through most of the prayers and the hymns because he was unfamiliar with the ceremony. Only when her coffin was lowered into the ground after the graveside ceremony, did he give a small sob and I took his hand. I knew it wasn’t much comfort, but he squeezed mine gratefully.

The Chanders still lived in the house that Daphne had grown up in. We had collected Naomi from Jennifer, who had taken the morning off to look after her and driven over to the house. Of course, now that Jennifer had moved into a condo, she no longer lived close to their old neighborhood.

We were greeted by Mrs Chanders at the door and she took Naomi from Justin’s arms to present her to the family. Justin looked as if he was about to cry. I dumped the bag of diapers and baby formula by the door and followed them in. By now, we were familiar to everyone, from the wake and the funeral, and were greeted almost like friends. I watched Justin trailing Naomi as if he felt he needed to protect her from her own family or as if he feared that he might never see her again if he lost sight of her. At least that way, he was on hand to answer all the questions about feeding and sleeping patterns. How anybody could be even remotely interested in something like that was beyond me.

I started a conversation with one of Mrs Chanders’ brothers, who owned a tire company in California and amused myself by revising his whole advertising strategy just because I could. I didn’t often give freebies, but he was a nice enough guy and it passed the time. It was good to have something to talk about because Justin and I were sticking out like sore thumbs amongst the family, who seemed quite close-knit.

I had lost sight of Justin, but after a couple of hours, I went to find him. He was in another room, talking to Mrs Chanders, who was holding the baby, and watching her as if she was likely to drop her at any moment. 

“We should go,” I said quietly.

He looked at me and I saw impending panic in his expression. Oh hell, this was going to be a disaster.

“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Mrs Chanders asked and she sounded genuine about it.

Justin’s eyes asked the same question, pleading for just a few more minutes, no doubt the first entreaty of many.

“I could go and pick up Naomi’s stuff, if you wanted us to bring it round today. Justin could stay here in the meantime.”

He smiled at me gratefully and I was hoping that I might escape being the target of his outbursts that were bound to follow later on.

“What stuff?”

Surprisingly enough, I realized what she meant even before he did, maybe because all of today this had seemed far too easy and things were never that easy for me. Not the important things anyway.

“You're taking Naomi today, aren’t you?” I said, in a last ditch attempt to avert disaster.

She looked genuinely stricken. “I thought you had agreed to keep her?”

“Of course,” Justin said quickly, having recovered from his own confusion and at least this time he seemed as surprised as I was. There was no way he hadn't taken her words after the wake yesterday the same way as I had: that the Chanders had wanted Naomi to come home to them. I almost expected him to grab the child and run out before anybody could change their minds.

Mrs Chanders looked at me for a while. “Did we misunderstand each other, Mr Kinney?”

“Probably,” I said, at the same time as Justin gave a definite ‘no’. I glared at him because, whatever he was to me, he was definitely not Mr Kinney and nobody spoke for me.

“I was under the impression that you would keep her. I'd be happy for Justin and you to bring her up, as long as we can be a part of her life. We can have a legal contract if you like. I realize that you need to safeguard yourself for the future, especially... in your position.”

“With all due respect, Mrs Chanders, I don’t think it’s your decision to make. There's a father involved.” Justin looked at me as if I'd run over his puppy, deliberately, and then backed over it once more for good measure.

“Hardly _involved_ , Mr Kinney. Lucas has no interest in her.”

“We should ask him first, don’t you think? He has rights.” In fact, at the moment he was the only one with any rights. Even the Chanders wouldn't have a say in the baby’s affairs unless he let them. “And there's a second set of grandparents involved.”

“I don’t want her to go to him. Or his family. I know nothing about them or him, really. Justin I know and trust. And I know he will never keep Naomi from us.” She smiled at him and he beamed back at her reassuringly.

I could see her point. There were no guarantees that Lucas would let the Chanders be involved in the child’s life. Legally, he didn’t have to and Justin no doubt feared the same for his involvement with her as well. Nevertheless, Lucas was the father and he'd known that Daphne was pregnant. He might not have shown any interest so far, but one day he would wonder and that wasn't a chance anybody should take. For Naomi’s sake.

“He needs to be told.”

“I don’t know how to get in touch with him,” she said tersely.

“I do.” I got twin stares for that piece of information and it was debatable who looked more disgusted with me at that moment, Justin or Mrs Chanders. I hadn’t told Justin about this yet because I didn't think it was his place to contact the father. To be honest, I was a little concerned what he would say to him. He had a way of spinning tales to his advantage. I had fully intended to leave the information with the Chanders so they could deal with it in their own time.  

“He won’t want her,” she said stubbornly.

“Be that as it may, it doesn’t alter the fact that he will have to be told. The sooner the better. Then we can all make an informed decision.” I looked down at the baby and felt saddened that her life would be decided by the courts or by some contract a bunch of lawyers would draw up. But I had already seen too many wranglings over custody and even I, who must have been the most unlikely and most reluctant father ever, had been known to refuse to hand over my rights to a more suitable person. There was no alternative, but just saying it made me the most hated person in the room.

I could live with that. I just wasn’t sure if I could live with what would happen if they turned out to be right about Lucas Pirie.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

**PART FOUR**

Lucas Pirie looked just like Justin did in the mornings, bleary-eyed with his hair sticking out in all directions and grumpy. In fact, he looked exactly like Justin, the same hair color, his eyes almost exactly the same shade of blue and incredibly young, like Justin would always seem to me. For a moment, I was so struck by the similarity that I could only stare.

“Can I help you?”

“Lucas Pirie?” Justin didn't appear to be fazed at all.

“Who might you be?”

“I’m Justin Taylor. This is Brian Kinney. Daphne may have mentioned me?”

“ _You’re_ Justin?” Pirie looked him up and down and apparently noticed the likeness as well. “Well, that explains a lot. This is your boyfriend?”

“Brian’s my partner, yes.”

Lucas gave me a quick once-over. “What’s this about?” he asked, not exactly pleased, but he opened the door at the same time to let us in. He was still in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, which looked slept in. His apartment was tiny and it didn’t help that it was very untidy. Although I had given him a day’s grace after his return from Columbia, he still hadn’t unpacked and there were clothes spilling out from various bags.

“It’s about Daphne,” I said carefully because I wasn’t sure if Justin would be able to get the words out. He hadn’t really spoken about her since she died.

“Yes, I heard what happened,” he said and went to the kitchenette to put the coffee machine on. I was relieved that we didn’t have to tell him, but Justin looked ready to punch him, probably because he came over as completely unconcerned.

“How did you find out?”

“I used to work at the hospital. That’s how we met. A friend told me.” He cleared the breakfast bar and gestured for us to sit. We were still staring at him and he finally noticed. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry that she died. She was a nice girl. But we’ve been over for more than six months. In fact, we never really started and when I look at you, I can imagine why. Apparently, I was just a stand-in.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Justin snapped. “We were best friends since kindergarten.”

And didn’t that sound eerily familiar?

Pirie just nodded with a grin.

“We were just friends,” Justin spat.

“Yeah, too bad for her you're gay.”

I put my hand on Justin’s arm to prevent him from launching himself at the guy. He probably wouldn’t have done anyway. Justin wasn’t a violent man, despite his hot-headedness sometimes.

“We’re not here about Daphne,” I said and took a seat. “We’re here about your daughter.”

“You want money?” he laughed. “I thought you two own half the planet between you. At least, that’s what she always said. You’re shit out of luck. I’m still a student. It will be years before I’ll be able to pay.”

This time, _I_ was ready to smack him. There was something about him that rubbed me up the wrong way. Both Daphne and Naomi deserved a lot more than this. I could also see my last chance to get out of this situation without any damage to my relationship with Justin disappear.

“You can keep your fucking money,” I said. “We want to know what you want to do with the baby.”

“ _Me_? Why would _I_ do anything with her?”

 “Because you're the father.”

He laughed again and poured three mugs of coffee. “Daphne made it quite clear that I was more of a sperm donor. And besides, I’m a twenty-two year old student. What would I do with a baby?”

Justin finally took a seat. I could tell that his worst fear had been alleviated. I knew he'd had visions of having to hand Naomi over to this guy before the day was out. That wasn't going to happen now, that much was clear at least. I suppressed a sigh and made one last try.

“What about your parents? She's their granddaughter.”

He laughed again and I was very tempted to hit him just so that he would have something to give serious consideration to. Even if he refused to contemplate the possibility of looking after the baby, she warranted a lot more thoughtfulness than he was giving her.

“My parents didn’t even know Daphne. They would skin me alive if they ever found out that I was dating a black girl, never mind having a kid with her. Or having a kid, period.”

To say I was stunned would have been an understatement. There were so many things wrong with that statement I didn’t even know where to start. I filled my coffee with way too much sugar even for me and started stirring. Then I looked at Justin to see how he was taking it.

“So would you be willing to relinquish your paternal rights?” he said and sounded hopeful for the first time since we got here.

I should have expected that that was all he was concerned about. He was so fucking single-minded when he wanted something. I should know, I'd been the primary beneficiary of that particular character trait of his.

Pirie shrugged. “Why not? Does it absolve me from all responsibility?”

“It certainly does.” Justin smiled brightly and produced some documents from the inside pocket of his jacket. He spread them on the bar and pushed them towards Pirie but not so far that he wouldn’t be able to snatch them back in a heartbeat. “As you can see, this releases you from your parental rights and responsibilities. It means you won’t have to pay a cent, ever, and it names me as the preferred guardian to Naomi with a view to adopting her outright if the courts agree. Daphne set it all up and she already signed at the bottom.”

 _What. The. Fuck_ ?!

Pirie started leafing through the documents while I glared at Justin. He kept his eyes steadily on Pirie, but I could feel the effort behind his not looking at me. Was he out of his mind?

“I would have to have my lawyer look over this.”

I picked up the documents and jerked them away from Justin, who made a grab for them as if he was worried that I might rip them to shreds right there. I might have done just to make my feelings about this absolutely clear and I was certainly angry enough for it, but they had Daphne’s signature on them, which had become the rarest of commodities indeed.

“You do that,” I said and glared at Justin, who tried to snatch the papers again once, then gave up. “You can’t have this copy, but I’ll have my secretary send you another one that you can take to a lawyer. I suggest you have a serious think about it before you sign. This is your child after all. Feel free to contact me if you would like to see her at any time. Justin?”

I gestured pointedly towards the door and he got up without another word.

“We’ll be in touch,” I said to Pirie, who didn’t bother showing us out, just casually waved his coffee mug as a goodbye. The apartment was really too small to bother about that anyway, as you could practically see the front door from any point inside it. The idea of bringing a child here was ludicrous, although not quite as ludicrous as handing her over to this guy in the first place. I threw one of my cards on the breakfast bar and followed Justin out, shutting the door behind me.

Justin turned on me the moment we were outside the apartment. “Can I have my papers back?” he asked icily.

I shoved them against his chest and he gingerly folded them together before putting them back into the inside of his jacket. In the meantime, I stalked off down the stairs and to the car. There, I lit a cigarette and tried to calm down enough to prevent myself from screaming at him once he would get out of the building.

None of the things Justin had done over the last week had been particularly difficult for me to understand. He'd lost his best friend and he was desperately trying to cling on to the one thing that he had left to connect him to her. Just because I didn’t feel the same way didn’t mean that I couldn't follow his way of thinking, or emoting in this case, because thinking seemed to have been suspended for the most part.

Nobody was really discouraging him from what he wanted. The Chanders had certainly made it clear that he was their first choice to look after their granddaughter and had even offered to make it legal. No one in our family was cautioning him as far as I could see. Except for some advice on how to care for the baby without obsessing, not even the level-headed Jennifer had asked him if he really thought it was a good idea. And now Pirie had turned out to be the kind of father no sane person would leave a child with.

I felt that the only person I could have relied on to talk some sense into Justin - and have a chance of being listened to - was dead. And everyone seemed to think that she would have approved of what was going on anyway. Maybe she would have. That wasn’t the point. I knew that if Lindsay had died in childbirth, she would have wanted me to look after Gus out of some romantic notion she had about me, when at the time, it would have been a disaster in the making. It wasn’t as if I expected Justin to turn out to be a bad father, far from it. He would make a far better dad than I would ever have any hope to be. The question was whether we were in the right place for a baby or if even just he himself was. And to that, my answer was an emphatic ‘no’.

If we'd had a discussion about this, we could have maybe worked it out and found a compromise. But Justin wasn’t interested in compromises. He wanted this and nothing would deter him from it. He had to know that he didn’t have me on board, yet he constantly tried to create a reality that would leave me no choice but to go along with it. And even that I could understand to some extent. A lot of steps in our relationship he had taken for us or ahead of me, knowing that I would be uncomfortable with them and might sabotage them if he let me. And then he had always waited patiently for me to catch up. It was how we worked. But this was a step too far. I simply couldn't follow.

He didn’t slide into the passenger seat until I had finished smoking. By that time, I'd calmed down enough to feel that I could drive safely, but I didn’t start the car. We sat for a good five minutes, both of us staring out the window, until he said softly, “Do you really think it would be such great idea to leave her with this guy?”

“Of course not. But you know that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“Is that even Daphne’s signature or did you forge that?”

He missed the implication completely and just said a little indignantly, “Of course, it is. Do you really think I would do that?”

I didn’t, but I had hoped he had. Because the alternative was worse.

“When did she sign it?”

“When she drew up the papers. She was always planning on getting Lucas to sign away his rights. And now that I’ve met him I can see why.”

“When exactly?”

He took the papers out of his pocket again and looked at the date. “Two months ago.”

“And she discussed this with you?”

“Of course. She told me she'd like me to adopt her baby at some point. She wouldn’t go behind my back like that.” He was always so quick to defend other people.

“So you were always planning to adopt Naomi?”

I could see that he finally realized what he had revealed. There was an instance of sheer panic in his expression and then I could see him frantically backpedalling in his mind.

“It wasn’t like that, Brian.”

“Really? Then, please, feel free to enlighten me what it was like. Because from where I’m sitting, you were planning on adopting the child of your best friend without even telling me. And you have been keeping this from me for at least two months.”

“It wasn’t like that. Honestly. I didn’t know that she'd put me down as the preferred second parent. She never told me that bit. I only found out when I looked for this last week at her apartment.”

“Come off it. You guys were always making outlandish plans together. Don’t tell me she kept it from you. How would she get you to sign the papers if you didn’t know?”

“Brian, I swear to you that I didn’t know my name was mentioned in the papers. Just because I’m in there, doesn’t mean that it has to be me. Or that the courts would approve.”

“Quite. It still doesn’t mean that.”

“But it makes things a lot easier. Or would have, if you’d let that fucker sign it.”

“He wasn’t going to sign it. He would have taken it to his lawyer anyway. And it doesn’t alter the fact that you were planning on adopting a child without discussing it with me first. Even before Daphne died.”

Justin looked stricken, but it might have had more to do with the fact that I had said the word that everybody else used euphemisms for. I didn’t see the point. She died. No other word would change that fact or make it any easier to bear. I waited for an answer with raised eyebrows.

“Remember when we talked about me having a child of my own?” he said quietly.

I nodded. I remembered only too well, but I had begun to wonder if he did.

“I told Daphne about it. And we got talking and we said that in a few years’ time she would probably want a sibling for the baby and how great it would be if we could have a child together. It was all just hypothetical. And we talked about how much better it would be if I could be a father to this baby, too. It was just talk. I would have talked to you first.”

“You have the fucking papers in your pocket. With her signature. That’s a little more than talk. And do you have any idea what the legal implications of adopting a child are? For you _and_ me?” I refrained from telling him what I thought of the fact that he had told Daphne about a discussion that I had considered at least semi-private. Or that somehow I hadn’t warranted the same courtesy when he had had intimate discussions with her.

“You’re worried about money?” he asked incredulously.

“Justin, we have common assets. You and I own property together and I already have a child. I have a right to know about these things. I have a right to be involved in the decision. And, yes, I’m concerned about money when it concerns Gus.”

“We talked about me having a child, Brian.”

“Would this be the same conversation you were just talking about? The one you felt you _had_ to share with other people? The same conversation where we both said that we wouldn’t want to - or be able to - raise a child full-time?”

“The situation's changed. If something happened to Mel and Linz, we would take Gus, wouldn’t we? There wouldn’t even _be_ a discussion.”

“Because Gus is my child, Justin. Naomi isn’t. She's neither mine _nor_ yours. And she's a week old. Gus is eleven.”

“Naomi is as good as mine. If we adopted a baby from a surrogate mother, it would be the same.”

“Yes, it would. And I would veto that as well. Let me make this absolutely clear, Justin: I fucking veto this. I veto taking in the baby of your best friend to raise as our own. I don’t want to and I won’t.”

His face fell. I didn’t know what he'd expected or hoped for because I thought I'd been pretty obvious in my opposition.

“Daphne asked me to look after her.”

“She meant until she woke up again. She didn’t know she was going to die. She was probably half-delirious by then anyway. And she was in love with you.”

“She was not!”

“Jeez, did you see the guy she picked as a father for her child? He's practically your clone. Open your eyes, Justin, she wasn’t thinking straight where you were concerned.” Just because it sounded callous didn’t mean that it wasn’t true or that he shouldn’t hear it.

“Well, my eyes are open now,” he spat angrily, glaring at me. “And I don’t like what I see. I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Well, let me solve that problem for you.” I threw the car keys in his lap and got out of the car. I felt too angry to be in the same space with him any longer and turned and walked away. The jeep was still there when I turned the corner two blocks away.

 

 

Kinnetik engulfed me with its pleasant work atmosphere and that, as well as the forty minute near-jog that got me here, finally calmed me down. Nicholas was just crossing the hall on his way to the kitchen when he spotted me. He diverted his path towards me to tell me how pleased he was that I was here and could he run a few things past me? It was good to be back after over a week. I told him to be in my office in ten minutes and asked Cynthia to follow me.

Cynthia had worked for me for fifteen years. We were friends who rarely saw each other outside work. Mostly, this was due to my being gay and preferring to spend my leisure time in a gay environment. Not every woman wanted to be a fag hag. Even after I had stopped making fucking every desirable guy in the western hemisphere my life’s achievement, her social circle and mine were very different. I barely knew anything but the basic facts about her life, had met one or two boyfriends at office functions, and also knew her sister in passing.

Cynthia, on the other hand, knew everything about me. In the old days, this had been due to Michael calling and turning up at all hours and me bragging about my life to all and sundry. She never liked Michael much because of how he used to be, but Justin she had taken an instant liking to, most likely due to his impeccable manners I had assumed. She was always more concerned about him than she was about me. Being my personal assistant, she had to know a lot about me to fulfil that role efficiently. Even though I had become more private over the years, I didn’t mind her knowing. It allowed her to anticipate my needs and I trusted her to never divulge anything.

In my office, I asked her to contact Justin and get a copy of the document he had. I had to explain some of the situation to her, but I stuck to the basic facts. I could never shake the feeling that she could deduce the things that weren’t said with unerring certainty. She just nodded and asked me if she should run them past the lawyer. ‘The lawyer’ was Alistair Gordon, who had represented me when Lindsay had pulled her famous disappearing act and Mel and I had tried to get me temporary custody of Gus. He was my personal lawyer, as opposed to the people in the legal department at Kinnetik.

I agreed that it might be a good idea. After that, could she pass it on to Lucas Pirie so he could discuss it with his own lawyer? I fleetingly wondered how a twenty-two year old student could afford his own lawyer or how he would keep his little secret from his parents if he was using theirs.

I picked up a black-rimmed card that was lying on my desk and held it up with a questioning expression.

She smirked. “Richard Collins sends his condolences on the sad loss of your mother.”

I snorted. “I should be so lucky.”

She laughed and waited a few moments to see if there was any more. I suddenly remembered that I didn’t have a car in town and asked her to send someone to Britin later to pick it up. She always kept spare keys in her desk. She nodded and got up.

“If Justin calls, tell him I’m in a meeting.”

“All day?”

“All day.”

I ignored her after that because if I didn’t, she would worm the whole sorry story out of me. When Nicholas came into the office, I started to immerse myself in business. It was a relief because it stopped me from thinking about other things.  

 

 

In the early afternoon, I took a walk over to the diner where I ran into Emmett, who entertained me with his newest exploits, this time on the boyfriend front. I laughed half-heartedly, because I was only half listening. Arguments with Justin always had that effect on me, draining my concentration. I could shut it out for work but not for personal stuff, especially other people’s personal stuff.

“You feeling the effects of having a newborn in the house?” he asked with a grin.

“Huh?”

“No sleep. No sex.”

“I sleep just fine. And my sex life will always be better than yours.”

“Alas, that's most likely true. Personally, I can't imagine you guys with a baby in the house. Well, maybe Justin, but you? I thought that was one hetero normative cliché you would avoid.”

Emmett could be incredibly shrewd sometimes. I just shrugged and drank some more of my coffee.

 

 

I stayed in the office until about eight o’clock. Cynthia had gone home half an hour before, leaving me a note to say that Justin had called three times. I turned the note in my fingers for a while before I balled it up and threw it towards the waste basket. It was just typical of my day that it missed.

The loft smelled of stale air because the cleaning lady only came once a week, on Thursdays. I threw open the windows and checked the answering machine. There was one message.

_“Hey. It’s me. Cynthia keeps telling me that you’re in a meeting, which is just your way of telling me to fuck off, isn’t it? I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to have a go at you today. I... I want to... I would like to talk to you... I think we need to talk. Could you call me? I’m assuming that you’re at the loft because it’s after seven and you’re not home yet. Could you at least let me know that you’re there, so I don’t worry?... uhm... I love you.”_

The beep tone that ended the message sounded loud in the quiet loft.

“Fuck you,” I muttered and went to have a shower. Then, I put on a wife beater and some jeans and raided the bar. We always kept it well stocked because we usually stayed at the loft one day each weekend, either to go to Babylon or if we spent an evening with the family.

When I left at half ten, it was mainly to avoid Michael, who I knew would be roped in by Justin to check up on me. For once, having Naomi in the house worked in my favor because it meant that Justin wouldn’t turn up himself. It also reinforced my worry that our life would drastically change if she stayed with us. Much as I enjoyed living at Britin, I did not want to be chained to it. I didn't think that Justin would want that either. Only he wasn’t thinking straight at the moment.

Babylon was the usual mixture of sweaty bodies, loud music and sexual tension in the air. Emmett was propping up the bar and when he spotted me, he took out his cellphone to send a message. He wasn’t in the least bit sly about it. Well, at least Justin would no longer have to worry. I joined Emmett and watched the dance floor, my eyes drawn to every blond twink strutting his stuff. Strangely, none of them appealed.

I was wondering if Daphne having been in love with Justin shouldn't have been such a surprise. It was pretty obvious to me now that this had been the case, but when she'd been alive, I had never suspected a thing. Maybe I hadn’t been looking because she had never been a threat to me. If Justin’s best friend had been male, I would have paid better attention.

I also wondered if Justin had known. I'd always known about Michael, even when I had denied it, to myself and other people. Everybody had always known about Michael. Had Justin ignored it or denied it? Or had Daphne just been better at hiding it? It was the straight version of the typical gay cliché of falling for a straight guy. In gay circles, that was grounds for much ridicule. Not that _I_ ever had a problem with that. Hell, I had never had a problem with falling for anybody until that twink came along.

By midnight, I was feeling no pain. I'd been slightly drunk before I arrived and after a lot more drinking and a selection of drugs, I was happily forgetting all my problems and probably even my own name if I carried on like this. I was basking in the pleasure of guys hitting on me.

There was one guy in particular, who'd been walking past twice already, each time trailing his hand lightly against my stomach, as if by accident, making my dick stir. He was tall and dark, with great assets and smouldering eyes, which he trained on me from the end of the bar. When he passed the third time, I stopped him by hooking my finger in the loop of his jeans. He grinned at me and nodded towards the back room.

Good, he was a man of few words, or no words in this case. I only managed a few steps before I heard Emmett call my name. He had been by my side the whole time, not talking much other than commenting on a few guys and thankfully not asking any questions. I'd never before noticed how many guys hit on him in the course of an evening, but he'd been refusing all offers - in a very elaborate and solicitous way. Clearly, he was babysitting me. Maybe I should recommend him to Justin for Naomi.

I turned around no more than halfway, making it clear that I wasn’t interested in the lecture I'd been expecting long before this, but he only tossed something at me, which I miraculously caught with one hand. I looked down at a packet of condoms.

They reminded me of the fact that I didn’t carry them anymore... because I didn’t use them anymore... because I was fucking raw nowadays. They had the opposite effect of what they were ostensibly supposed to do. While it seemed like a helpful gesture from a friend, Emmett had achieved exactly what he wanted without ever saying a word.

“Fuck!”

“That’s the idea,” tall-and-dark said and tugged on my wrist a little.

I shook him off. “Fuck off.” Had I really just been on my way to the backroom with him? What happened to not fucking in my own club any longer? Or not fucking anybody but Justin any longer?

I looked at Emmett, who was looking back at me with an inscrutable, almost bored expression.

“Do you need a ride home?”

He smiled. “Yeah, why not? It’s a school night after all.”

 

 

Despite my late night and various intoxicating substances that I had consumed, I was awake by five o’clock. I remembered Emmett driving me home, which meant that he probably took the car with him. Ah well, the walk to work would clear my head a little.

I lit a cigarette and looked up at the ceiling. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing or hoping to achieve by being here, only that I'd had to remove myself from Justin. He frustrated me no end. And whenever we had an argument it brought it home to me that he had somehow managed to bring me to my knees – quite literally actually, because he was the only guy I gave blowjobs to while kneeling.

He made me feel weak and pathetic. Before he came along, I had been impervious. Now, I was vulnerable. Yes, I could still pretend not to care and I could always pull it off, but it was so fucking hard to project aloofness and indifference nowadays and it hurt like hell on the inside. I knew I would always lose because Justin had the option of walking away, he actually had done a few times. I didn’t have that luxury. I had worked out long ago, that while I could survive life without him, I really didn’t want to.

So where did that leave me now? He was hell-bent on bringing up this baby and I was just as passionately opposed to it. The very thought made me feel trapped. I was over forty now, by the time Naomi would leave home, I would be sixty and in the meantime, our whole life would have to be structured around her. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Maybe in a few years time, but probably not even then.

Maybe Daphne’s and Justin’s plan of having a child together in the future, and even of him adopting Naomi as well, would have worked. I would never have deprived Justin of the opportunity to be a father. And in that case, Daphne would have been the main carer and if she'd died at that point, there would have been no question of not taking the baby in. But Naomi wasn’t his child and I wasn’t willing to give up the life style that I loved for some stranger’s kid just because she had nowhere else to go. We weren’t running a shelter for parentless children.

The question was what was I going to do if Justin wasn’t willing to give her up? We would have to separate and I wasn’t sure if I could. I had really thought that once we had solved the tricking issue, nothing would be important enough to split us up. How pathetically stupid of me. We had always been living on borrowed time. How could I have been deluding myself for more than a year now that what we had was permanent? I had forgotten, or blocked out, my conviction that Justin would leave one day. In truth, I had always assumed that he would find someone else. And then the whole monogamy thing had lured me into a false sense of security.

But now, he was leading me somewhere where I couldn't follow. I just couldn’t. I wasn’t fatherhood material. Never in my wildest dreams would I have considered being a full-time dad to Gus. Even when Lindsay had taken off for three months, the question had never been whether Gus would live with me, it had been about preventing Lindsay from causing any more damage and supporting Melanie in her effort to gain full custody temporarily. I loved Gus dearly and was as close to him as I possibly could in the given circumstances, but being his sole carer would have been doing him a disservice.

I had just spent an impromptu night at Babylon. There would be no more of that, at least not for both of us together, if we had a child. No more vacations. No more daylong painting sessions for Justin. What would we do with her if he had to go to his showings? Or even at home, there would be no more fucking on every surface available whenever we felt like it, no more lazy days in bed full of sex and talking, hell, for quite a while even the nights wouldn’t be our own.

I liked my life the way it was. One of the advantages of being gay was that there were no unexpected pregnancies. Having a baby had never been in my life’s plan and I had always rested assured in the knowledge that, unless I actively planned it, it wouldn’t happen. Gus was as far as my involvement would stretch and, in fact, he was already much more part of my life than I had ever meant him to be. And as much as I loved him, I would not agree to being a father to another child.

I listened to the messages on my cellphone, deleting them as I went along. There were four from Justin, all dating from the day before, asking me to call him, when would I be home and would I let him know where I was. The last one was from just before I got to Babylon last night.

There were also two messages from Michael, asking if I wanted to meet and telling me that I was welcome to stop by if I felt like it. I really didn’t see enough of Michael any longer. We were both so busy nowadays and now that I lived at Britin, I saw even less of him. Well, that looked likely to be no longer a problem soon, because I would be moving back into the loft if Justin insisted on keeping Naomi.

 

 

Just after ten o’clock that morning, I got a phone call from Alistair Gordon. He had received the paper work Cynthia had sent him.

“What do you think?” I asked.

_“That depends. I believe the mother of the child is deceased?”_

“Yes. She died in childbirth last week.” Was that really only a week ago? It felt like a lifetime.

_“Then the document is pretty useless. The father can’t relinquish his rights to the mother if she's deceased. Effectively, it would just make the child an orphan. The fact that Justin is named in the document doesn’t really have any legal bearing either. It doesn’t mean that he has to accept it or that the courts have to accept it. However, if he wanted to, he could apply for guardianship and with this document, he would at least stand a chance unless her blood relatives object. In fact, I’d say if they agree, his chances are pretty good. Is there a will, stating that he's the preferred choice as well?”_

“I have no idea, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

_“That would be good. And if he could get the baby’s grandparents behind him, he would be in a good position. However, I would have to set up a new document for the biological father, which takes into account that the mother is now deceased. It would be just a basic surrender of his rights.”_

“Okay. Could you do that? And send it directly to Justin?” Whatever else I felt about this whole situation, I was pretty convinced that getting Lucas Pirie to give up his parental rights was the best thing that could happen to Naomi.

_“Of course, I’ll messenger it over to him this afternoon. Now, the other matter is how it affects you. Are you planning on adopting the child?”_

Not fucking likely. “No.”

_“Well, there are still legal implications for you. One, if Justin should end up destitute, the way your finances are linked at the moment, you could end up being responsible for her upkeep and education etc. Two, if you should die and all your assets go to Justin, he can do with it as he pleases, except for the trust fund for Gus. Should Justin then die intestate, the money would go to his child if he adopts her and not to Gus. Three, should you both die at the same time, the money would go to both, Gus and the baby, in equal shares. You should also stipulate if you want to keep Mr Schmidt as guardian and trustee for the baby, as he is for Gus, in that case. And four, if you don’t adopt the baby and Justin should die, you would have no rights whatsoever to keep the child.”_

Well, at least that last one was really not a problem, but it looked like I needed to safeguard Gus a lot better if Justin adopted Naomi. But in that case, our assets would be divided up in the long run anyway.

I thanked Alistair and went back to work. At lunchtime, I took a stroll over to Michael’s shop. He was busy putting out new stock but stopped to sit on the counter to share the lunch I had brought from the cafe at the corner. Almost immediately, he asked me why Justin was calling him to see where I was and I answered evasively, not wanting to explain the whole thing to him.

Michael just nodded. “Don’t let it fester, Brian,” he said. “It’s always easier to talk about it if it hasn’t gone on too long.”

“Is that one of Ben’s Buddhist wisdoms?”

He smiled and poked me in the ribs with his elbow playfully. “No, that's a genuine Novotny wisdom. And learned the hard way, believe me.”

Ben and Michael always seemed so happy and content, but twice they'd had epic fights over the years, and over issues I had trouble acknowledging as genuine grievances or even remembering by now. In those instances, I just lent Michael my couch and my ear and waited for it to blow over. It always did, with Ben coming over to grovel until Michael went back home. Yeah, Ben was a poor sucker, who would always be in the weaker position because he loved Michael more. I preferred not to think too much about that.

I also preferred not to think about the fact that, for once, talking wouldn’t get us anywhere. It was an either/or situation. We couldn’t adopt Naomi a little bit, just like you couldn’t be a little bit pregnant. It was either Justin and me or Justin and Naomi and, as usual, the choice wasn’t mine to make.

I decided to take Michael up on his offer for dinner at his house in the evening and ended up watching crappy videos with him and Hunter. When I got back to the loft at close to midnight, Justin was asleep on the couch.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**PART FIVE**

Justin awoke when I pushed the door shut. He sat up with the start and looked around, disoriented and all tousled from his sleep. Why did he always have to look so fucking hot when we were in the middle of an argument? Justin and I had a lot of arguments and usually we just screamed at each other, slammed some doors and spent time in separate rooms. Britin was perfect for that, plenty of rooms to sulk in and actual doors to slam. Then we would talk and fuck – not necessarily in that order - and everything would go back to normal. This was the first time in a long while that I had actually removed myself from his presence after a fight and last night I had realized why I hadn’t done it for so long: I could no longer fuck my problems away without him. That didn’t exactly put me in a better mood.

“Oh, you _are_ here,” he said, smoothing his hair down.

“Like you didn’t know that already, after you practically sicced the whole family on me.”

“I was concerned when you didn’t come home.”

“And today?”

“Today, I called Cynthia to see if you were in the office. I wanted to know how much of a bender you went on last night. You may have noticed that I didn’t even ask to speak to you.”

“What, Emmett didn’t report back to you about how his babysitting at Babylon turned out?”

He sighed and got up. I was standing by the bar and contemplated whether being drunk would be an asset or not. It would make me lose any argument we would have, but it would be good to get ahead of the game and be half-drunk already by the time he would storm out the door. I could hear him come up to me and then I could feel him standing close behind me, but he wasn’t touching just yet. He knew very well that I would pull away if he did, but a large part of me wanted him to, needed him to, even.

“Can we please not do this? I want to talk to you. And then I want you to come home.”

I turned to look at him. “I am home.”

He didn’t even flinch. “This is the place where we stay when we’re too tired or too fucked-up to go home. I want you to come home. To me.”

Fuck him. I hated that he could do this to me. That he could make my heart pound just by being in the same room with me. For the longest time, I had thought that it was just lust, maybe a little stronger than I felt for all the other guys, but I had long ago resigned myself that it was something else altogether. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“I want to apologize to you,” he said and I was wondering if I had misheard him. We didn’t often formally  apologize to each other. I still found it hard to admit that I wasn’t always right and he usually had no reason to. “I misunderstood what you were trying to tell me all along.”

I put the glass back down untouched and stepped back a little, so that I wouldn’t grab him and kiss the hell out of him. If he was apologizing, there might be some hope yet.

“I thought you were just trying to stop me from getting hurt because you didn’t think I had any chance of getting custody. I didn’t realize that you genuinely didn’t want to take Naomi in. I was so wrapped up in things, I didn’t pay attention to you. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t, Justin. I don’t want to take her in. I thought you knew that. I don’t want a kid full-time. I want my freedom, _our_ freedom. If it was Gus, maybe I would take him. Or if Naomi was yours, maybe I would... okay, in either case, I definitely would, but she’s not yours. She is Daphne’s and Lucas’s child. I don’t want to give up my life for a stranger. I’m not that charitable.”

“So, if Naomi was mine, you would take her in?”

“Justin,” I said warningly. He’d better not tell me that he was...

“No, I’m not the father. But... I want you to hear me out, okay?” He stepped closer and put his hand on my arm. Unfair advantage, but I let him get away with it. “Can we sit down?”

I made an inviting gesture towards the couch and followed to sit next to him. He tucked one of his legs under him, so he was facing me, his arm stretched along the back of the couch, gently touching my shoulder. I was staring at the window, which was too dark to see anything. His proximity did nothing for my resolve not to give in until I had not only made my position clear but had also got him to agree. This was one issue where I couldn’t just fuck him and hope it would go away.

“Remember when we had that conversation about me fathering a child? We both agreed that we didn’t want to be full-time parents. And I would still prefer that. But... like I said I talked with Daphne afterwards and she suggested that she would like her baby to have a sibling in two or three years’ time. She said it would be unlikely that she would have a partner by then and if I were the father, I could have what you have with Gus. I was kind of looking forward to that. And we thought it would be good if her children could have the same father, at least almost, so we thought it would be good if I would act as a father to Naomi, too, so she wouldn’t feel left out, maybe even adopt her. So I suppose in my heart I feel like she’s mine. And I would have discussed it with you before I made any decisions. It was still all theoretical.”

He fell quiet and I remembered that he had just lost his best friend. I looked at him and he was struggling for composure, so I stroked his hair. Holding the back of my hand, he rubbed his face gently against my palm, taking comfort.

“I wish I'd discussed the whole thing with her _before_ she got pregnant. Then Naomi really would be mine and there wouldn’t be this mess. I wouldn’t choose to be a full-time dad, but this is the only way that I can imagine ever being a dad. I don’t know any other women well enough to want to do this with them. And I don’t want a surrogate mother because I don’t want to have to explain to my child one day that I paid for them to be born and that their mother was only interested in the money. That seems cruel to me. The way I see it, this is my only shot at being a father.”

“But you're not the father. It would be no different from Gus or Jenny.”

“Yes, it would. I can’t explain it. I _feel_ like I’m her father. Like Daphne wanted me to be her father.”

“Yeah, there’s really no doubt about that,” I snarked and then I felt guilty because his expression was so hurt. It wasn’t his fault that Daphne had maybe loved him a little more than was good for her. And she had at least ensured that, physically, the baby was as close to a child that she might have produced with Justin as possible.

“I went to Babylon last night,” I said and ignored his frown at the seeming non-sequitur. “What did you do?”

“I was at home, looking after...” He stopped and nodded. “I get it. Yes, I admit our lives would change dramatically. And again, I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I feel like this is fate and I’m willing to give up a lot to make it work.”

“I’m not.”

He withdrew his hand from my arm sharply. Maybe my response had come out a little harsher than intended or had been strictly necessary.

“Because she’s not mine?”

“Because it’s not fate. If she was actually yours, then it would be fate. Or if something happened to Mel and Linz, that would be fate. This is just grief management for you. And I’m not giving up my life for a child that is neither of ours, just so that you can cope better with Daphne’s death. Go to counselling for fuck’s sake. I’m really not cut out to play the good Samaritan and I wouldn’t be doing the child any favors either if I forced myself to do this.”   

It had taken me a long time to become a halfway decent father to Gus and he was my own flesh and blood. I couldn’t love another child like I loved him and what kind of a life would that be for Naomi? Even if I started out with good intentions, I would never be able to sustain it for the rest of my life. I would fuck up the poor child like my parents had fucked me up. She would feel unwanted and unloved and no amount of love Justin could give her would ever make up for that.  

“But you love Jenny.”

“No, I don’t. I’m fond of her and I would do almost anything for her if need be, but I don’t love her like I love Gus.” It was true. I didn’t mind her tagging along when I took Gus out and I always made sure that she had an equal amount of presents, but I did that because she was my son’s sister and my best friend’s daughter. If she had been neither, I would probably have ignored her, like I had my sister’s kids. Come to think of it, my sister’s kids were my blood and yet I felt nothing for them, so maybe the blood theory didn’t hold much water after all.

“Nobody expects you to love anybody as much as Gus.”

I glared at him and he looked back at me for a while, then lowered his eyes.

“You are telling me that you don’t want this and you won’t change your mind?”

“I’m not saying you can’t be in her life if that’s what you want. She can come over and spend some of her holidays, like Gus. But I don’t want to bring her up. If that’s what you want, then you’re on your own.”

His head came up sharply. “You’re making me choose?”

I shrugged. Now that it was out in the open, I wasn’t going to take it back. It was basically what it came down to, but I had been too chicken shit to say it because there was next to no chance that he would choose me. That was part of the problem: that I couldn’t help resenting her for Justin choosing her over me.

“Please, don’t make me do this,” he said pleadingly.

“There’s no other way. It’s all or nothing. We can’t be her parents just a little bit. And I don’t want to bring her up full-time. If you can’t give her up, then so be it. It’s your choice, Justin.”

I got up and made my way into the shower, leaving him sitting there with his head down. While I was under the spray, I was wondering if I would really go through with it if he chose Naomi. Would I be able to just give up my life with him or would I accept in the end that a more domestic life with him would be preferable to a life of freedom without him? But there was Naomi to consider as well. What kind of a father would I make if I couldn’t love her?

I was fully expecting Justin to be gone by the time I had finished showering, but he was still in the same place. He looked up when I came out. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Come here.” I stretched out my hand and he got up and came into my arms. His clothes rubbed against my naked torso. It seemed like we hadn’t had sex in a long time although it was just forty hours, but who was counting anyway? “I’m gonna fuck you all night,” I growled and he shivered.

He was out of his clothes within half a minute and we barely made it to the bed before I plunged into him with abandon. Apparently, forty hours was way too long. The only thing that made me stop long enough to apply plenty of lube was the thought that I really wanted to keep doing this for the rest of the night. Justin didn’t usually mind a little friction pain, but it would mean that he would have to cry off at some stage during the night. I wasn’t having any of that. This was my only chance to show him what he would be missing if he didn’t choose me.

After the first round, I started taking it slow. I explored his body like I was having him under me for the first time, with my hands and my lips and he responded with wonderment at first, then tenderness and finally pleading for me to let him come. Yes, I was determined to make him writhe and beg, but I was also trying to memorize this. Because it felt dreadfully familiar. Because it felt like that night before he left for New York. It felt like goodbye.

He dropped off when it was already getting light and I just lay there, holding him in my arms. This had been the first time in over a week that we had had time for leisurely sex. It reinforced my conviction that I didn’t want to give this up. I didn’t want to have quick fucks while Naomi was taking a nap. I wanted to be able to go out on the spur of the moment. I didn’t want to have baby sick on my clothes or have the place stink of dirty diapers. I wanted to curse to my heart’s content in my own house. And I  didn’t want Justin too tired to remember how to spell his own name, never mind paint.

But in all that, I wanted Justin most of all.

I had done my best. If after tonight he was still willing to give it all up for his best friend’s child, then there was nothing I could do. After all, what else was there? If anything, my refusal to give in only brought home to him what he had always known, what everybody knew, that I was a selfish asshole who only thought of his own comfort. He certainly had the moral high ground on this one. He would do what was right. He always did.

I must have dozed off for a little while because I awoke to Justin giving me one of his original blowjobs. Well, he was certainly doing his best to remind _me_ what **_I_** would be missing. I was trying to stretch it out for as long as I could, but he knew my body too well and I came in his mouth with a groan way too soon for my liking. He rested his head on my stomach for a few moments and I was playing with his hair while I was slowly floating back down to earth.

“I have to get to my mom’s,” he said regretfully. “I left Naomi with her and she has to go to work.”

A bucket of cold water couldn’t have had a worse effect on my mood. Fuck this whole situation. “Well, then you’d better go,” I said coldly.

He sensed the change in the atmosphere immediately and got up to get dressed. I lit a cigarette and watched him. Him rushing off to see to the baby without showering off the sweat and come from the night before was just what I would have expected from the domestic hell he was proposing. Next, he would turn fat. Luckily for him, his clothes couldn’t possibly get any more casual. So, why the hell did I still find him hot like this?

“So, what now?” he asked, when he was finished.

“Up to you,” I said casually.

He breathed in deeply, almost sighing. Then he turned to leave.

“Justin,” I said, when he was just down the steps.

He looked back at me hopefully.

“Don’t come back here until you’ve made your decision.”

His face fell and for a few moments it looked as if he wanted to say something or even cry. But he had outgrown that a long time ago, so in the end, he just nodded and left.

It might have sounded callous and it felt awful seeing him so hurt and not being able to comfort him without losing ground, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I could just imagine how it would go. I would stay at the loft, he would live at Britin. He would rope in his mother and whoever else he could persuade to look after Naomi and would come to spend time with me whenever he could and, in the end, he would never make that decision. Naomi would stay with him by default and we would have a relationship like we had before, when we hadn’t lived together. He would have the best of both worlds and I would have neither the relationship I wanted nor my freedom. I could not let that happen.

I put out my cigarette and went to have a shower.

 

 

And so began the first day of the ‘twelve days of hell’, as I came to call it. I was at work before everybody else turned up and I was still there when everyone had left. Then I went to the diner to eat, home to get changed and to Babylon to... look over the books and check out how everything was going in general. Why did all the guys always look so much hotter when I wasn’t able to touch?

On Saturday, I went swimming which I hadn’t done since Gus had been here at Easter. He'd been on the swim team for a while now and if I wanted to keep up with him, I should really keep up the practice. In the evening, I went to Woody’s and met Ted and Blake, who would have made rather pleasant company if they hadn’t been so disgustingly happy the whole time. It always amazed me how Ted of all people could make his relationship with a guy fifteen years his junior appear like a walk in the park. They weren’t even sickly sweet like Emmett usually was when he was in love, they were just... content. Luckily, neither one of them was given to dispensing unsolicited advice or even just to asking questions. We played pool and then went to Babylon for a bit and they even stayed late enough to get me home safely.

On Sunday, I went to visit Michael, but he almost immediately grabbed his jacket and pushed me back out the door. Apparently Hunter and Ben both had papers to grade or some such thing that these fine educators of young minds had to do on a regular basis. Mikey and I got some takeout and came back to the loft to eat and drink and smoke weed.

“You did _what_?” he spluttered, when I told him about Justin’s last visit. “You gave him an ultimatum?”

“I asked him to make a choice.”

“A choice with a threat attached to it. It’s an ultimatum, Brian.”

Damn, having two academics in the house was really rubbing off on him. “I didn’t threaten him.”

“You said you would leave him. Believe me, he will consider it a threat. He loves you, Brian.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Bullshit. Even if he doesn’t give her up, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. He'll be devastated either way. What exactly do you expect him to do? What's he supposed to do with the baby? I thought the whole problem was that she has nowhere else to go?”

“Yeah,” I agreed sarcastically. “We could just open up a home for kids who have nowhere else to go. Britin's big enough.”

He glared at me. “It’s not the same and you know it. This is Daphne’s kid. She was his best friend. I would like to think that you would do it for JR if something happened to the girls and me.”

Why did Mikey always have to get personal? And why did everybody always assume that I loved Jenny like my own? The only child I'd ever loved and taken an interest in was Gus. I cared for Jenny, but it was not the same and would never be even if she lived in my house for the next twenty years. And since when was I considered fatherhood material in my friends’ eyes? And wasn’t it amazing how Mel and Linz were still the ‘girls’, even though they were both over forty now? Why wasn’t I allowed to be a boy any longer?

“Your mother would have something to say about that,” I joked.

He looked at me for a while. “You really have a problem with this, don’t you?”

I frowned at him. Hadn’t I just spent the last half hour explaining to him what my problem was? Either he'd smoked too much weed, or I had. “No, Mikey,” I said sarcastically. “I just enjoy winding Justin up. It's so much fun when he’s not talking to me.”

He put out his hand along the back of the couch and cupped my neck. “You’re not your dad, Brian.”

What the hell did that have to do with anything? I shook him off a little more forcefully than intended. “Yeah, well, at the moment I’m no fonder of screaming babies and dirty diapers than he was.”

 

 

Weekdays were easy. I could go to work early and stay as long as I liked and there was always something to do. In the evenings, I could eat somewhere and then drink myself into oblivion, only to get up the next morning to do it all over again.

The weekend was harder. Of course, I could go into work, but there was only so much I could do without other people around to bring my brilliant ideas to life. And I could hardly ask people to give up their free time just because I'd had a fight with Justin. So there was more down time at the weekends. Luckily, Michael was around more. He always did that when I needed him. He called more often, suggested to meet up more and I gratefully accepted. Usually, he did no more than ask a couple of questions about how things were going with Justin and then changed the subject unless I was in a talkative mood, which I never was.

So the second weekend slid into the new week and there was still no word from Justin. I tried not to think about him, but I couldn’t help picturing him fussing over Naomi, telling her how I would come round eventually. He was very much mistaken. And wasn’t it incredible that after all we’d been through, we had been defeated by a two-week-old baby?

I called it hell because it was worse than all our other separations on so many levels. First, there was the obvious problem: as long as Justin didn’t tell me outright what he had decided, I didn't want to assume anything, so I couldn’t fuck anyone else. If I did and he then told me he had chosen me, I didn’t want to go through another six months of using condoms again. I enjoyed bare-backing too much. So I was fucking horny almost all the time.

Then there was the uncertainty. That was new. In the past, we had either been split up and as much as that hurt like hell, at least all my worries had been gone. No need to worry about him leaving me if he'd already left. It had always been just a matter of finding enough distractions – work, drink, drugs, fucking – to survive another day. Or we'd been separated and he had insisted on us still being together, like when he went to LA or New York. Those times had been hard because I'd been convinced each time that he would never come back. But at least he'd been constantly reassuring me that it would all work out.

This time, I was on my own. There wasn’t a word from him, as per my request. I imagined him sitting at Britin, trying to find the courage to call me and tell me that it was over. I knew he didn’t want to, but in the end he would. Because there really wasn’t much of a choice involved. Michael had been right that there was nowhere for Naomi to go, at least nowhere that would be acceptable to Justin. And even if there had been, he would never choose me over an innocent child, the daughter of his much loved friend. Nobody in their right mind would. Even an unlimited supply of Brian Kinney fucks wouldn’t be enough for that.

I thought about calling him many times. I wanted to demand an answer, to be put out of my misery. Just to get it over and done with. Or I could maybe give in. Was the change in my life style really so important that I would accept losing Justin over it? Maybe I could just put up with it. At least I would have Justin in my life. But then I thought of Naomi and imagined what it would be like for her to grow up with one of her parents resenting her. I knew what that was like and I simply couldn't do that to any child. It was one promise I'd made myself that I would never break. I would never be that kind of a father.

I thought I was going out of my mind. It took all my strength not to let it show how miserable I was. It didn’t help that I barely slept. Whenever Justin and I were together and things were seemingly going well, I often had nightmares about him leaving me. But whenever we were apart, my dreams were always about him coming back to me. As pleasant as that might be, waking up to reality was pure torture, so I tended to try and sleep as little as possible.

And through it all, the very worst part was that, at the back of my mind, there was always this tiny glimmer of hope. No matter what I did to stomp it out, it never completely disappeared. I knew it was hopeless and stupid, but as long as he didn’t say anything, there it was, mocking me with something to hold onto that kept me from moving on... or going under completely.

I finally cracked on the second Wednesday. I had just got home and was surveying the contents of the bar. The thought of drinking yet another night away made me feel ill. And it made me angry that I'd been reduced to this.

I pulled out my cell phone and hit 1 on the speed dial.

 _“Hey,”_ he said, picking up after the third ring.

“Hey. Do you realize that I can’t fuck anyone until you’ve made your decision? I’ve had blue balls for more than a week now and I would appreciate it if you could give me the go-ahead to go out fucking again.” Good. That hadn't sounded too desperate. It seemed like a reasonable request to me.

_“Fuck. Are you at the loft?”_

“Yes, but unfortunately not fucking.”

_“Stay there. I’ll be there as soon as I can... can you stay there, please?”_

“Yeah, I’ll be here.”

I went to have a long shower and then I had a shave and tousled my hair and put on the shirt that I knew he liked. At the very least, I wanted him to have some regrets when he saw me. Then I sat on the couch and pretended to myself that I was actually reading the magazine I was holding.  

He was there quicker than seemed possible and there was something in the way he pushed the loft door open and shut that told me he was angry. It seemed prudent to get up because I didn’t like the idea of him towering over me when he let go of his temper. Shouting never worked for me when I had to look up at someone.

He came up to me and gave me a little push. It wasn’t hard, but I allowed myself to take a couple of steps back.

“You fucking bastard,” he said, not particularly loud but with venom. “Do you have any idea how much I hate you right now? How can you do this to me? How can you make me choose? I love you so much, but right now I just really hate you.”

Yeah, that made so much sense. Well, at least he hadn't made his decision lightly. I was strangely pleased about that even though it tore me up to see him in such turmoil. What had I been thinking? Why the fuck had I called him? Because now that he was here, I wasn’t sure if I could ever let him go again. It would be twice as hard now to watch him walk out the door. Why did he bother to come over? He could have just told me his decision over the phone. In fact, I would have preferred it that way. He wouldn’t be able to see my reaction then.

“So what’s the verdict?” I said and surprised myself with how casual it sounded.

“That you are a fucking bastard,” he said again, louder this time and then he seemed to crumble a little. “It’s you,” he said quietly with a shaky voice. ”Of course, it’s you. It's always been you. And it always will be. _I choose you_.”

The sheer relief made my knees want to buckle, but I managed to stay steady somehow. It was impossible to find a response because it was the last thing I had expected. I had steeled myself to tell him that if he chose the baby, so be it. All this time, my biggest fear had been that I would stumble at the last hurdle. That I would cave in and tell him that I changed my mind and if he chose her, I would consent, under protest, but still. The thought of living for the rest of my life without him...

At no point had I prepared what I would say if he chose me, after all. It had seemed so improbable that he would. I rolled in my lips and concentrated on breathing normally, on staying upright and on not letting anything show on my face. But I didn’t do such a good job of it, apparently.

He was staring at me, breathing heavily with anger still and waiting for a response. Then his eyes widened a little and his features took on a look of surprise. “You thought I would let you go,” he said, looking incredulous. “After all this time, you thought I would give you up.” It was halfway between a statement and a question.

I shrugged and he gave a typical Justin reaction, one of those things that I could never do because I was always so focussed on winning our fights, on not losing face, that I overlooked his needs. I could grab him in the middle of a fight and fuck the shit out of him and that was often a victory in itself. But this I could never do and I was incredibly grateful that he sometimes could.

He stepped up to me and drew me into a hug, his arms viselike around my neck and one of his hands tangling in my hair. “You should know better than that,” he said in a voice so soft that it seemed impossible that he'd been shouting and swearing at me a minute ago. “I will give you up for nothing and no one. Why would you think that?”

 _Because you’ve done it before and with less reason._ By then I had wrapped my arms around him and my head buried in his shoulder and I just shrugged again. He moved back a little and I straightened up so we could look at each other. “So, you wanna show me your blue balls?” he asked with a smirk.

I had to laugh. People always thought that Justin was the mature, even-tempered one of us, when in reality his mood could change in the blink of an eye. I, on the other hand, tended to slowly build up to losing my temper and then was just as slow to return to an equilibrium. Justin had, in the last two minutes, gone from livid to caring to horny without ever breaking a sweat. No wonder I found living with him stressful. And exhilarating. And fun. And the best thing that had ever happened to me, little deserved as it was.

So I decided to reward him with some spectacular fucking, which wasn’t really that difficult after twelve endlessly long days. We both moaned and groaned our way through the first round and while my balls might not have been actually blue, they were certainly grateful for the real thing, as was the rest of me. After the couch, we relocated to the bed for round two and three.

I was having a smoke afterwards and playing with his hair, while he had his head on my chest, drawing patterns on my skin.

“I have to go home soon,” he said quietly. “I'd like you to come with me.”

“Why do we have to go home?”

“Mom’s there. But she wants to go home because she has to work tomorrow.”

I didn’t know what I had expected, but when I thought about it, I realized that I should have known that Naomi was still at Britin. Where else would she be?

Justin lifted his head up to look at me. “Are you going to come home?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. I had won. Against all the odds, I had won the argument. There was no reason not to go home and I was relieved about that.

“Good,” he said and kissed me thoroughly and deeply for a long time. Then he rolled off the bed. “I’m gonna shower.” He looked at me questioningly to see if I would join him.

I nodded.

“Good,” he said with a smile. And then his smile grew stiff, but he kept it up to mask how hurt he was. “And then you can tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do with Naomi now because I have no fucking idea.”  

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**PART SIX**  

When we arrived home, Jennifer was sitting in one of the armchairs, just finishing feeding the baby. She gave me a long-suffering look but greeted me friendly enough. Jennifer and I didn’t see much of each other. For the five years that Justin had been in New York, our contact had consisted mainly of coordinating visits and carrying items to and from him. Since he'd come home, he usually saw her when I wasn’t around.

I still didn't like to do breeder things like family dinners and she had stopped asking because she liked to keep not just me but also Justin and Tucker apart. I had a certain admiration for her for having an apparently happy relationship with a guy in his thirties when she had passed fifty a couple of years ago. They'd been together for seven or eight years now and I knew there must be a certain amount of disapproval from the people around her. I could relate.

She once told me that the most flak she got for having a toyboy came from her own family, namely her brother and sister and Justin. Justin had finally accepted that Tucker wasn’t going anywhere and was civil, sometimes even friendly, when he was around. But they would never be close. Jennifer was just lucky that Molly and Tucker had got on like a house on fire until Molly moved to Dartmouth to study Biochemistry, all paid for by her very proud and loving daddy. I couldn’t help but think that Molly was just playing Craig until she finished her education and then would tell him where to stick it. There had certainly been some extremely sardonic remarks from her on that front over the years.

So, while Jennifer and I had some liking for each other, she would still jump to Justin’s defense in a heartbeat. They were very close and when Justin had a problem, she would turn into a lioness protecting her cub and, as his problems usually had their root in my behavior, I had to bear the brunt of it. Jennifer resembled Debbie in that respect, so their unlikely but nonetheless firm friendship should maybe not have been such a great surprise after all.

Now she got up and, putting the bottle down, she brought the baby over to where Justin and I were sitting next to each other on the couch.

“I gave her a bath and she’s ready for bed. She just needs burping.”

Justin stretched out his arms to take her, but Jennifer moved sideways a little and gently pushed the baby against my chest until I automatically brought up my arms to cradle her. I glared up at the woman, wanting to tell her that this tactic wouldn’t work, but before I could say something and before Justin, who was getting ready to rescue me, could get his hands on Naomi, his mother smiled sweetly at him.

“Walk me to my car, sweetheart?”

I wanted to protest, but it was said with that strange tone that mothers have that no son who wants to stay in his parents’ good graces will ever be able to ignore. Without thinking, Justin was out of his seat before she had even bade me a good night. It was an ingrained response that had only ever failed during those short teenage years. He helped her into her jacket, which had been slung over the back of the other armchair, and followed her without any sign of protest.

And then I was alone.

With the baby.

I had held her only twice before, once at the hospital and once when Justin had been covered in her vomit and he had dumped her on me without asking, so he could get changed. Now she was looking at me for the first time. I could have sworn her eyes had been dark blue, but now they were black. Her skin had darkened to the same shade as Daphne’s had been and her hair was incredibly thick. She looked the spitting image of her mother, which was fortunate for her since her mother had been a beauty.

Suddenly, I felt angry with Daphne for leaving us in this mess. I knew it was irrational since this was the last thing she would have chosen, but here I was with her daughter, whom no one knew what to do with. A daughter who wasn’t quite Justin’s enough to make all decisions simple, but on the other hand too much his to simply dismiss her.

Naomi pulled a face that could have been a smile but probably wasn’t and closed her eyes. I put the cloth Jennifer had left me on my shoulder and put the baby against it, gently rubbing her back. She seemed incredibly tiny. After a while, she made a wet burping noise and I pulled her back to see how much of a mess she had made, but there wasn’t any. Good girl.

As Justin seemed to be taking his time, I went upstairs and put her to bed, making sure that the baby monitor was on and taking it down with me. To be honest, I was a little surprised that Justin hadn’t moved her closer to, or even into, the master bedroom in my absence. Maybe he had never contemplated that I might not come back, which meant that his decision had always been in my favor and he had just been delaying the inevitable by not calling. On the one hand, I felt relieved about that, on the other it made me sad that not even her biggest champion put Naomi above everything else. Every child should have someone who put them first.

When Justin came back in, I had already drunk my first Beam and was pouring another. Then I felt that I really had done enough drinking over the last couple of weeks and just put it down.

“Did you bring mommy dearest up to speed?”

“Uhm, yeah. Where's Naomi?”

I turned to look at him. “I put her down the garbage chute. I thought we agreed to get rid of her?”

“Ewww. That is so not funny.”

“I put her to bed. What did you think I did with her?”

“You did?” He seemed pleased somehow. “Uhm, did you burp her?”

“Yes, I burped her. Your mom said she needed burping, I burped her. Your mom said she was ready for bed, I put her to bed.”

He nodded a few times. “Thank you.” Then he turned to leave the room, no doubt to check that I'd done it correctly.

“The monitor is over there,” I said, pointing to it.

“Yeah, thanks.” He hesitated. “Did you... uhm... what position did you put her in?”

That question was wrong on so many levels. “Justin, I have a child of my own. I put her to bed. On her back and I made sure she isn’t too hot. But by all means, feel free to check that I haven’t endangered her life in any way, either accidentally or deliberately. Because that would solve all our problems now, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you are incapable of looking after her.”

“There are very few things I’m incapable of,” I said warningly.

“I know.”

He was hovering by the armchair and it was painful for me to watch. It had been a long time since I'd seen him so uncertain.

“I got Lucas to sign the documents that Alistair sent me,” he said finally. “Thanks for that.”

I was no longer sure that it had been such a good idea. While Pirie was without a doubt unsuitable to be a father as well as being a general pain in the ass, I couldn’t help wondering if his parents might not have surprised us, if they'd been told about the baby. Although it would most certainly have meant that the Chanders would have been pushed out of Naomi’s life. And Justin. But it wasn’t our place to tell them and from what Pirie had said, they were even less suitable than he was. Then again, we only had his word for that. But no matter, it was too late for that option now.

“Lucas’ lawyer added a clause that we aren't allowed to ever contact him or his family. He wanted to add a clause that Naomi could never be told that he's her father.” He could barely contain his disgust. “But Alistair said, it wouldn’t wash. Even sperm donors can’t claim anonymity.”

“So, when she’s eighteen, she can go and tell him what a piece of shit he is?”

“Pretty much.” He shrugged. Well, it wasn’t as if Pirie wouldn’t deserve that.

He looked around for a bit, then straight at me. “I don’t know what to do with her, Brian. I’ve been racking my brain and I can’t come up with anything. I’ve spoken with Olivia and she says, she really can’t take her. Her husband needs too much care. She doesn’t have time to do both. All the rest of her family live out of state and aren't keen either. She got very upset when I told her I couldn’t keep her. She really laid on the guilt trip. I felt like such a shit when I came home afterwards.”

“Yeah, mothers and their guilt trips. What about your mom?”

“She's keeping out of it for a change, more or less.”

Yeah, like I believed that. “Actually, I meant to take Naomi. It’s not like she and Tucker are ever gonna have kids. He might like one.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

I had been only half joking, but looking at his incredulous face, I realized that I was clutching at straws. For one thing, Jennifer would be over seventy by the time Naomi left home and I had no reason to assume that she even wanted to raise another child. And even if she did, Justin would be over there every day to make sure everything was arranged to his satisfaction, especially with Tucker playing daddy. It was a recipe for years of arguments and strife.

I'd been thinking about Mel and Linz as well, but the Chanders would never go for it. Nor would Justin. Although, if the new parents didn't want any interference from him, shipping her out of the country was probably the only option. If Naomi couldn’t stay with the Chanders, there would have to be a clean break, otherwise it would cause Justin endless upset.

On top of all of that, we didn’t know where we stood legally. Alistair had indicated that Justin might have a good chance of gaining custody, but if we didn’t keep her, would we even have a say in where she would go? Surely, all the rights to her reverted back to the Chanders in that case.  

“Have you considered foster care? Or adoption?”

His face fell and he went to sit down, looking studiously at the carpet under his feet.

“I can’t see any other solution. Can you?” I prodded as gently as possible.

He looked up. “Yes, I can. And I can’t understand why you don’t want to. I said I would abide by your decision and I will, but I would really like to know why. Why can’t we just keep her? Why are you so set against it?”

I should have known that he hadn’t really given up. It wasn’t in his nature. Was this his plan? To get me to come home and then work on me until I agreed with him? I sighed. “I have given you a house and a relationship and even monogamy, Justin. This is where I draw the line.”

“Why?”

I glared at him.

“I don’t believe that you just don’t want to, Brian. That isn't you. You’re kind and generous. You wouldn’t do that to an innocent child. Or to me.”

“Do you know how much money I made last quarter?”

He frowned in confusion. “I have a rough idea.”

“Do you have any idea how many people I could help if I gave it all to charity? Or if I started my own charity, let’s say a home for parentless children?”

“Brian,” he sighed. “It’s hardly the same.”

“Justin, I will say this only one more time. I work long hours. Every day. You disappear for days on end into your studio. I have business trips once or twice a month. You have shows to attend, on a monthly basis at the moment. We like to go on vacations. We like to go out, sometimes two or three times a week, not usually planned. When Gus is here, we both find it hard to not be able to do what we always do, not smoke in the house, not get drunk, not swear, not fuck when we want, where we want. Any of this ringing a bell?”

“But that's true for most couples who are having a baby.”

“And that's their choice. Or not, if they’re stupid enough not to wear condoms. But we're queer. And that means we always have a choice. _We_ didn’t have a baby. _Daphne_ did. Believe me, Sunshine, if I knock you up, I'll be happy to face the consequences.”

“But...”

“Justin,” I said warningly. “You said you made your decision. If that’s not true, tell me right now and I'll go back to the loft. I don’t want another kid. I’m no good at it. And I will not discuss the same thing over and over again.”

“You're a great father. You just need to trust yourself more.”

“Gus and I are alright. But that doesn’t make me father of the year. And even if it did, it’s still a choice. I’ve made my choice and you said you made yours. Was that a lie?”

“No,” he said quietly. “But I’m having a hard time understanding and I suppose because I don’t understand, I’m angry with you for making me do this.”

“You want me to leave?”

He shook his head. “No, I want you here. I’ll shut up about it.”

He looked so incredibly upset, that I walked over and pulled him up into my arms. He came to me willingly enough. “Why don’t you call Melanie tomorrow? She’s done a lot of family and custody cases. She probably has a good idea of all the options.”

I couldn’t help wondering how we had ended up trying to find a ‘good home’ for Naomi in the first place. Why was it our responsibility? Nobody had asked that other friend of Daphne’s, September, if she would like a baby. But it wasn’t really about that. If that had been the case, we could just call the authorities and be done with it. No, this was about the fact that Justin was so emotionally invested in this child that it would be hard for him to accept any alternative. 

And that was when it hit me. He wasn’t uncertain at all, he was simply devastated and I was beginning to realize what this would do to him. Making him give up Naomi was hard enough for me because I hated seeing him so upset. It didn’t help that I knew that he had the whole family behind him and that usually meant that he was right and I was just being an asshole. I could even admit that, morally, he was right. He wanted to do right by his best friend and it was the last thing he could ever do for her. But there were two other people involved. Naomi wouldn’t thank us for having to grow up in a house where her presence was resented and I _would_ resent her eventually. The question was really: if I made him do this, would _he_ end up resenting _me_?

I had always done everything in my power to make sure that he never had any reason to regret being with me. I had sent him off to New York, to LA, even to the fiddler, just so that he would not end up resenting me. I finally realized – a few hours too late – that I'd made a colossal mistake, the kind of mistake only a truly self-involved person would make. I really should allow him to do what he wanted and needed to do, like I had always done, because he would regret giving up Naomi for the rest of his life.

The way I saw it, relationships broke down in two ways, they either went out with a bang or they died a lingering death. A bang occurred when you learned something about your partner that you didn't know or he did something that you found unacceptable. There was a fight and then a break. With that, there was always the chance that you could pick up the pieces somehow, after a while. But if your relationship had died a lingering death, it was because some feeling that you hated just wouldn’t go away. You got bored. Or irritated. Or resentful. And there was no coming back from that. The relationship would just fizzle out, until all feelings had died. And if you were lucky, you managed to leave eventually, if not, you ended up like my parents.

If he was right and he would never have a child of his own, this would eat away at him until it broke us apart. It was very possible that he would never find another woman to have a child with. Lindsay was certainly the only woman I would have ever considered having a child with – or rather give a child to. He would end up hating me for making him do this. He would try not to but, in the end, he would.

There was only one logical conclusion. I should have realized it before and done the right thing, however hard it was for me. I always had done before. But instead, this time, I had put him through the heartache of making a choice simply because I couldn’t bring myself to give him up. Over time, it had got harder and harder to live without him. So much so that the last time he had left me, I had taken him back with no questions asked, only to punish him afterwards. That wasn't an option here. If Justin kept Naomi, I would either have to be 100% behind him or not with him at all. Anything else wouldn’t be fair on the child.

So I was really only left with that one choice. Justin would hate me for it, not just for leaving him but also for making the decision for him, but in the long run he would hate me more for making him give up Naomi and then we would break up anyway. Only then, it would be a long drawn-out and painful process and he would end up with having neither Naomi nor me. That was the worst possible outcome. The question was: would I be able to go through with it? I wished I had never called him tonight, had never come back here. What had I been thinking? I had selfishly let myself be blinded by my desire for him instead of doing what was needed. The only consolation I had was that I had realized my mistake before Justin had started any irrevocable proceedings.

“Do you want to go to bed?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

 

 

We had both fallen asleep almost straight away. I'd had too many nights with too little sleep and he'd had too many night feeds with the baby. Yet when Naomi woke us at a quarter to six, I felt more rested than I had for the last two weeks despite having slept only five and a half hours. Justin got up quickly to see to her and I lay back to rest a bit longer before I had to get up for work.

He had left the baby monitor and I could hear him talk to her while she wailed for food. He sounded amused rather than stressed out or annoyed by it. I could hear love and tenderness and sadness in his voice. After he had changed her out of her dirty diaper, I heard his voice and her cries fade away as he took her downstairs.

I admired a lot of things about Justin.

There was his talent. He could produce likenesses of people and objects that enhanced them in subtle ways and always left me speechless, especially since my own renderings barely went past stickmen. But he could also paint abstracts that drew you in and made you feel something. No mean feat, since I considered most modern art blobs of paint on a canvas. His art just worked, and it _lived_ somehow.

He had an incredible resilience and courage in the face of adversity. Asshole fathers, school bullying, baseball bats, gimp hands and bombings might knock him down for a while, but he always got back up, dusted himself off and started again. There was a grit and determination there that was as strong as my own, if it didn’t surpass mine.

My personal favorite was his perseverance. If Justin wanted something, he never gave up until he got it. He might take a breather sometimes to gather his strength and rethink his plans, but he never lost sight of his goals. His hand not working? I knew better than anyone how much therapy and exercise he'd put in to get it back to the way he needed it to be. Becoming a renowned artist? No problem, all he had to do was up sticks and go to live in a strange city for a few years. Getting Brian Kinney to become his partner? Piece of cake, really.

But it was his openness that I could never understand. He met people head on, always giving them the benefit of the doubt, always trying to understand them, always trying to help where he could. It was inevitable that he would get disappointed and hurt sometimes, but that didn’t cause him to withdraw or hit back. Even when he came across me, he was undeterred. I credited Jennifer with that. She might have wobbled for a short while when he came out, but afterwards she'd been, and still was, his strongest support. She had instilled him with an innate belief in the endurance of love that even the likes of me couldn’t destroy. And, boy, had I tried! 

Justin loved me. I knew that. I did. I just didn’t have his confidence that he always would. And he loved this child, that had through nobody’s fault somehow ended up in his care. There could have been worse fates for her and very few better ones. If I made him give her up, he would be destroyed and I could neither be the cause of that nor could I watch him wither. This would quash his spirit. I had no right to do that to him. I had no rights to him at all. Naomi did.

But neither could I live here in happy family bliss. The only reason Gus and I worked was because I was a drop-in dad. I loved spending time with him and the older he got, the more fun it was. But after he left or I got back home from a visit, I could go back to smoking, drinking, not minding my every word and going out whenever I felt like it. And that was the only reason I didn’t mind living a child-friendly lifestyle around my son. I could not see myself sustaining that behavior for years on end, not even for Gus. I loved him dearly, but I was also quite happy to leave the heavy lifting to Mel and Linz. There was no chance it would work with Naomi. I had few limitations, but I was well aware of them.

Justin came back to bed after just over an hour. I should have been getting up for work really, but I was quite happy to let him convince me that there were more pleasurable things I could be doing.

By the time I got downstairs, Mrs Hanson had arrived so it must have been after nine o’clock. She was in the kitchen and had already made coffee.

“Good morning, Mr Brian,” she said with a bright smile. She'd been calling me that ever since I told her to call me by my first name. “Did your trip go well?”

I was a bit confused for a moment, but then I realized that Justin must have given a cover story for my absence. You really couldn’t take the country club upbringing out of the boy. I declined breakfast but gratefully accepted a cup of coffee. I still found it strange to have somebody in my house who worked for me. Usually, I managed to be at work before Mrs Hanson showed up, but she caught me for a few minutes around once a week. My cleaner at the loft I had often not seen for months on end.

“So, when is Gus coming this year?” she asked, while she was unloading the dish washer.

“Week after next. He’ll be staying for two weeks this year.”

“I’m sure he’ll have a great time. I dare say he’ll be in the pool all day again, if the weather holds.”

I just nodded, realizing that I hadn’t considered Gus’s visit. It meant that I either had to stay at Britin until after he left or I had to take him to the loft. Gus deserved better than being dumped right in the middle of one of his parents breaking up again. Under no circumstances was I prepared to do that to him. As tempting as it was to have him there to get me through the first couple of weeks of being on my own again, I could not use my son in such a way. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to delay. It would give me time to prepare Justin properly for the separation. I could hardly just walk out the door. He also deserved better than that.

I was just in the hallway, gathering my things, when the doorbell rang. Mrs Hanson came out of the kitchen, but I waved her off. She was here to clean and do a bit of cooking, not to wait on us hand and foot. I was quite capable of answering my own door.

Outside, there was a strange woman with a small pile of notebooks in her arm and there was a strange car parked in our driveway.

“Mr Taylor?”

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Hilary Abbott.” She pushed a laminated ID card towards me that was attached to a chain around her neck. “I’m from Allegheny County Human Services. I’m looking for Justin Taylor. And baby Chanders. Do they live here?”

Fuck. My timing at the moment really sucked. “You’ve come to the right place. I’m Brian Kinney. Come in, Ms Abbott.”

I made an inviting gesture and she stepped inside the house, taking quick stock of her surroundings, while trying not to be too obvious about it.

“I would have called, but Mr Taylor has a listed number and the hospital had only the contact details for Dr. Chanders.”

I nodded and walked to the bottom of the stairs. “Justin!”

He came walking down the stairs a moment later, his movements slow, a picture of abject misery.

“You have a visitor.” I introduced them and he self-consciously pulled on his t-shirt, trying to somehow cover his sweatpants. Before we went into the lounge, I asked Mrs Hanson if she would mind bringing some coffee for our visitor. Like I said, I didn’t expect her to wait on us and ordinarily one of us would have gone into the kitchen to get the refreshments, but I really didn’t want to miss any of this conversation. I settled myself into one of the chairs.

Ms Abbott started off by conveying her condolences to Justin and then asked a few questions about Naomi. It was obvious that she was under the impression that Justin was the father. She avoided looking at me, unsure perhaps of how I fitted into the whole picture. And wasn’t that the question of the hour?

Mrs Hanson came and brought a tray with hot drinks and Justin introduced her to our visitor. When she had left again, I asked the question that had been occupying my mind since she’d arrived. “Excuse me, Ms Abbott, but why are you here?”

“It’s just routine, Mr Kinney,” she said and now that she had an excuse to look at me, she took full stock. I was unconcerned. In my Armani suit – or even without – I would always pass muster. “We were informed of the birth by the hospital and as the mother has passed away, we're just making sure that everything's all right. Obviously, this is not a situation that could have been anticipated during the pregnancy. We're just trying to help. So I take it, you weren’t living with the mother before the birth?” She looked back at Justin.

Justin had been shooting me a few uncertain glances before, but when I looked at him now, he took a deep breath and said to her: “You're aware that I’m not actually the father, aren’t you?” It came out as if it was the most natural thing in the world, taking a baby home that wasn’t his own. Only because I knew him so well, could I detect the apprehension behind his words.

“Uhm, you're not?” She looked at me uncertainly and I shook my head to confirm the statement and to answer her unspoken question that maybe I was the father. “I think you’d better explain the situation to me then.”

Justin started on a detailed, but very clear, explanation of what was going on. I could have done it in half the time, but he made extra sure that there was a heavy emphasis on Daphne’s actions and wishes. Apparently, while I had been away there had been a reading of Daphne’s will and – what a shocker! – she had practically bequeathed Naomi to Justin.

“So, you're the mother’s best friend and birth partner and that's how the hospital thought you were the father. The biological father has already given up his parental rights and the maternal grandparents are happy for Naomi to reside with you. You also have documents that indicate that the mother would have agreed to this arrangement, including the mother’s will. Am I correct so far?”

“Yes.”

“And you're willing and able to provide a home for Naomi?”

Justin hesitated, his face a picture of despair. He tried to speak a couple of times but failed miserably. It was time to stop being a coward and put my decision into practice.

“Naomi wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case,” I said quietly. Justin’s head snapped around to look at me so fast it was a wonder he didn’t get whiplash. I ignored him and concentrated on our visitor.

“In that case, may I ask how you fit into the picture, Mr Kinney?”

“I’m Mr Taylor’s partner.”

“You're in a homosexual relationship?”

I couldn’t detect much of a reaction there, just a request for clarification, it seemed, so I just nodded.

“And are we talking adoption here?”

“I think Justin's a bit old for that and he already has parents.”

Justin glared at me, but she laughed, turning back to him. “Can I see the papers you have? I need to contact the biological father and the maternal grandparents. At the very least, the birth certificate needs to be changed to reflect the true parentage of the child. I can do that for you if you like. And I need to see the child’s environment and Naomi herself.”

We embarked on a tour of Britin but kept it to the main areas. She wasn’t going to buy the place, just get a rough idea of what it was like. Her only remark was that it would take a lot of child proofing. She insisted on picking Naomi up, even though she was asleep, and looking her over, getting her undressed and changing her diaper, which wasn’t strictly necessary, but I suspected that it wasn’t the objective anyway.

Naomi made her displeasure abundantly clear, but because she wasn’t hungry yet, she settled down pretty quickly after Justin took her. We walked back downstairs, where I retrieved the relevant papers and addresses from Justin’s desk. I made copies of the paperwork for her and added Alistair’s card to it.

“So, what’s the verdict?” I asked, after she'd been leafing through the papers for a while.

“Well, I need to know what your long-term plans are. It’s obvious that Naomi is well cared for at the moment and you're obviously able to offer financial security. Everybody involved seems to think of Mr Taylor as the preferred caregiver. Even the mother made arrangements to that effect before her death. So, the question is: are you looking to adopt Naomi? In that case, we would have to put you through the ordinary adoption assessment, but since she's already here, it would be slightly less stringent than it would normally be. And a lot quicker because if you're unsuitable, it would be in everybody’s best interest not to leave her here for too long.”

Justin looked at me for guidance, as well he might, because during this visit I'd made a one hundred and eighty degree turn without giving him the slightest warning. I would have preferred to have the time to talk this through with him, but we could hardly do that in front of this woman. If he wanted to have any chance of keeping Naomi, there couldn’t be any doubt in the mind of the authorities. So I just nodded encouragingly and he beamed at me with so much love it made me feel sick that he had no idea of the condition attached to this concession.

“Yes,” he said with much enthusiasm, turning back to Ms Abbott. “I definitely want to adopt her. Daphne asked me to adopt her anyway. She didn’t want Lucas to have anything to do with the baby and her parents are in no position to do this. I can and I want to.” He smiled down at Naomi, who had gone back to sleep in his arms. It was the first open smile I'd seen from him since she was born.

“So what are his chances? In your expert opinion?” I asked.

“It depends. Are you looking to adopt her, too?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” I ignored Justin’s frown.

“Well, the state of Pennsylvania allows adoption to single persons regardless of race or sexual orientation and as everything's already in place, it's almost as if the onus would be to prove that Mr Taylor is an unfit parent rather than him having to prove that he's a fit one. It's always more difficult to remove a child than to not hand her over in the first place. I would have to speak to a lot of people, like the biological father, the grandparents, the people at the hospital, employers and so forth. But I can see so far that Naomi is in good hands and I would write a recommendation to that effect.” She smiled at the baby in Justin’s arms. “I suppose it’s quite safe since she’s a girl.”

That was so unexpected and, I suspected, so unconscious that it left me stunned into silence for a few moments. She was already gathering her things when I found my voice. “Excuse me? Would you like to explain that last remark, Ms Abbott?”

She looked up and it took her a moment to realize what I meant or maybe to even realize what she'd said. Justin had worked it out at same the time as me and he was looking at me pleadingly to let it go. There was no way in hell, I would let this go.

“Uhm...”

“Are you suggesting that it wouldn’t be safe to leave a boy with Mr Taylor, because naturally, being a homosexual, he wouldn’t be able to refrain from molesting the child?”

“Brian,” Justin said warningly.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, looking most uncomfortable now.

“Then please enlighten me as to how you did mean it, because I can’t for the life of me think of any other interpretation of that remark.”

She had blushed furiously. “I apologize,” she said finally. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Justin said quickly.

“Yes, it does. I will not be accused of being a child molester in my own home and neither should you. So I’d like you to leave, Ms Abbott. You can expect a letter of complaint from my lawyer. And any future dealings, house visits and such like you will have to announce in advance because I'd like my lawyer present at every single one of them.”

“Mr Kinney, I can assure you that I didn’t mean anything by that remark. I’m already on Mr Taylor’s side as I've said. If you can accept my apology for my thoughtlessness, we can solve the whole case a lot more amicably.”

“Leave my house. Now.”

“Brian!” Justin was desperate now, as desperate as I was livid. The little bitch, pretending she didn’t care about sexual orientation and then showing her true colors at the last moment. It just went to show that all straight people are homophobes underneath.

She had gathered all her papers and, with another apology, she stalked out of the house. I followed her, so could slam the door behind her. When I turned, I found Justin standing at the end of hallway.

“You just couldn’t let it go, could you?” he snarled. “She was going to help us! But you just had to put your queer agenda first. First, you dangle this hope in front of me out of the blue and then you just snatch it away again because, God help us, if the great Brian Kinney should overlook a single homophobic remark. Sometimes, it seems like you’ve made it your life’s ambition to jerk me around and fuck me over. You've no idea how much I hate you right now!”

It was an indication of how livid I was, that the easy innuendo didn’t even occur to me at that moment. “She called you a pedophile! I will not stand for that in my own home!”

“But this isn’t just _your_ home. And it doesn’t concern just _you_. In fact, it doesn’t concern you at all, apparently, because you made it quite clear just now that you still don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

Naomi had woken up and, predictably, had started crying in his arms, so he made some calming noises to her, while he turned on his heels and stomped up the stairs.

I thought it prudent to leave the house.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

**PART SEVEN**

Alistair Gordon returned my call two hours after I asked Cynthia to get in contact with him. By that time, I had calmed down considerably, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t still think I'd been right. I had come across a whole range of homophobic behavior in my life and, yes, I had ignored some of it on occasion, when I knew it was pointless, or dangerous, to speak up or the situation demanded that I kept my mouth shut, mainly when I'd started out in business. But not in recent years and in my own house I couldn't tolerate it for anyone.

After he listened to my explanation of what had happened, Alistair was quiet for a while.

“Well?” I finally asked.

“ _You’re a smart man, Brian. You must be aware that pissing off your adoption case worker is not the best move you could have made.”_

“She called him a pedophile.”

_“Yes, she did. And it will give us a lot of leverage to have her removed. But that may not be the smartest move either. You would still have to deal with the same department and if you attack one of them, the rest will not look favorably on Justin’s case. It’s human nature. From what you were saying, she was in favor of giving Justin custody up until that point, so our best bet might be to play on her fear of being sued and keep her on the case on her best behavior. How are you getting on with Melanie Marcus these days?”_

“The same. Well enough, I suppose. What's she got to do with it?”

_“I’d like your permission to contact her, explain the situation and ask her advice. She knows just about everyone in Human Services personally. She can tell us if this was a glitch on Abbott’s part or deep-seated homophobia, in which case we would have to go to court as soon as possible.”_

I agreed for him to call her and asked him to keep me and Justin updated.

At lunchtime, Debbie cornered me in the diner to gush about Naomi and Justin for a while. Apparently, she'd been out to the house twice in my absence. It was obvious that she had heard about the ‘ultimatum’ I'd given Justin and wanted to let me know how much she thought Justin would suffer if he had to give her up. Thanks, Debbie, I'd worked that one out all by my little self. Family interference was all well and good, but it would have been nice if people got their facts straight. But I knew she meant well and she was quite astute when she put her mind to it, so I let her prattle on and even agreed with her, which, unsurprisingly, confused her to no end.

Melanie called me in the afternoon, which was rare and usually meant bad news, but she only told me that she had spoken to Alistair. Luckily, she knew Hilary Abbott rather well.

“ _She's one of those do-gooders with no clue_ ,” she said. “ _You know, all politically correct and mortified when she says the wrong thing._ ”

“She must have been _thinking_ the wrong thing in the first place to actually say it.”

“ _I think she was probably thinking of other people having objections rather than herself thinking along those lines. She's not a homophobe from what I can tell and I had a lot of dealings with her. She’s been in the department for eons and there never was a problem of the homophobic kind, if you know what I mean. She would have to be a great actress to hide it for twenty years.”_ I reserved judgement on that and she continued, “ _Pennsylvania has a strange legislation. They let single gays adopt and they also allow second parent adoptions like mine with Gus, but if a gay couple asks to adopt, they're more likely going to end up in bureaucracy hell. And they're also more lenient with lesbians than they are with gay men_.”

“I don’t wanna adopt her.”

“ _Yeah, I heard that_.” She paused and when I didn’t elaborate, she carried on, “ _As Naomi's already living with you, Human Services would have to have a damn good reason to remove her. Justin's looking pretty good. The girl’s family is behind him and the father is out of the picture. I would suggest you keep Abbott on the case. She’ll be mortified by what she said and will be bending over backwards to help you._ ”

“I’d rather not have any woman bending over for me, thank you very much.”

Melanie laughed. “ _It’s good to know that you haven’t lost your eclectic humor. Can I tell Linz about this? Not what happened this morning, just that Naomi will be living with you?_ ”

“Sure, why not? It’s not exactly a secret and it’s not as if we'll be able to hide it.” In fact, I was surprised that no one had told the munchers about it yet. Or maybe they'd been under the impression that it was temporary. Another possibility was that Debbie and Michael had told Melanie and she had elected not to tell Lindsay.

“ _Thanks. Is everything still on track for Gus coming to visit?”_

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

_“Just making sure. He’s looking forward to it. I don’t want him to be disappointed.”_

“Nothing will change for Gus. Ever.”

“ _I know that, Brian, I was just making sure because things are a little up in the air at your place at the moment.”_

She sounded sincere. Then she asked me if there was anything else she could do and I said she could call Justin to reassure him. We finished up shortly after that.

It was very tempting to stay at the loft again that night as I was working very late. Although it was debatable whether working this late was strictly necessary or rather voluntary. Staying in town would save me from having to deal with a very pissed off Justin. I couldn’t get it out of my head how he had looked at me when he realized I was agreeing to keeping Naomi and when he was so incredibly angry for taking that away from him again just a few minutes later. Sometimes, I wondered why he hadn’t given up on me a long time ago. So, in the end, I decided not to be a coward and went home.

Justin was surprisingly upbeat. He came downstairs and kissed me when I got in and I sure as hell wasn’t going to question it. Apparently, he'd had quite a few phone calls during the course of the day. Alistair had called to tell him that he had spoken to Hilary Abbott and they had decided to keep her on the case. She'd been very apologetic and he thought it would work in Justin’s favor. There would be a meeting between all the concerned parties to discuss how to proceed.

Melanie had been as good as her word and had called to speak to him about Ms Abbott but also about adoptions and guardianships in general. Justin and Melanie were better friends now than they had ever been. Whenever Lindsay and Melanie had problems, Justin always came down firmly on Melanie’s side. His disdain for Lindsay’s flighty and manipulative behavior in the past and the impact it had on Gus and Jenny was barely concealed when he spoke to other people and very vocal when it was just him and me. He adored Melanie for being consistent and reliable.

Finally, the woman herself, Hilary Abbott, had called him to formally apologize again and to set up a meeting for the following Wednesday, for which she expressly requested my presence. Too right, I would be there. And Alistair.

“Melanie called you the Teflon man,” Justin said with a smile, drinking tea while I made myself a small snack in the kitchen. “She said no shit ever sticks to you. Only you can fly off the handle, do something so imprudent and it will still work in your favor.”

“It’s a gift,” I grinned.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning. I know you were right and you know that I would normally be the first one to speak up, but I was just worried, you know. All I could think was that she had the power to take Naomi away from us.”

“I know,” I said. Really, Justin, of all people, did not have to reassure me that he would stand up for gay rights when necessary. And the fact that he was willing to let it go this morning just highlighted how invested he was in the child.

Then he gave me one of those soft smiles that he sometimes had when he thought I'd done or said something sweet. I had no clue what it was this time, but I was quite willing to reap the benefits.

“Thank you for changing your mind.”

Ah, that was it. I took a deep breath to tell him that it wasn’t as straight forward as it appeared to be, but then the seconds to do that trickled away somehow and he sidled up to me and was kissing me and I allowed myself to forget that I had to tell him that I wasn’t part of the equation any longer, or at least not for much longer.

 

 

The next few days I had ample opportunity to watch Justin with Naomi and every time I saw them together, it confirmed to me that I'd made the right decision. Justin might have been willing to give her up for me, but he shouldn’t have to and it would have crushed him. There was no doubt in my mind that I had been right.

He didn’t try to bring Naomi and me closer together. I knew what he was doing. He was giving me time to adjust, waiting patiently for me to follow his lead. But this time I couldn’t, which, granted, was what I always thought, every time he stepped ahead of me in our relationship. Only this time, I didn’t just think so, I _knew_. He looked after Naomi by himself and only once did he ask me to hold her while he changed her bed. I didn’t mind. Other than feeling a little apprehensive around her, as I did around any baby, I had no particular feelings for her, positive or negative. But she sure was beautiful.

She wasn’t getting in the way much either. Once she woke up while we were fucking, but we were nearly finished anyway, so she just had to wait five minutes. I wasn’t so soppy that I would bemoan the fact that there was no post-coital cuddling. We didn’t always do that anyway and it had been my way of life for so long that I barely noticed it.

On Wednesday, all the ‘concerned parties’ descended on Britin. I had taken the morning off. Alistair arrived with five minutes to spare and then there were Mrs Chanders, Hilary Abbott and one of her colleagues, named David Farrier. It seemed Ms Abbott had decided it would be prudent to bring a witness. Smart woman. Apparently, Lucas Pirie, having given up his parental rights, was no longer considered a concerned party, not that he had ever seemed in any way concerned to begin with.

Alistair and I barely took part in the discussion. There was a lot of reiteration of the situation, practical and legal. There was a lot of talk about this being the preferred option for everyone concerned. And then there were a lot of forms to fill in. Alistair earned his substantial fee by reading every document before passing it to Justin with a nod. Justin signed without reading. He seemed to be in a rush to get through all of this. Maybe he was worried that I would fuck this up for him once again.

Apart from Alistair and Mrs Chanders, nobody really spoke to me and I stayed quiet throughout. This was for Justin. Ms Abbott and her colleague threw me some uneasy glances, which I ignored. It was obvious that they would have been happier just dealing with Justin alone, that they considered me a loose cannon, but couldn’t just discount me, as I was his partner. Asking me to be here had just been part of the procedure. Luckily, their opinion of me didn’t seem to have any bearing on their attitude towards Justin, but it brought home to me that I was the weak link here.

If Justin were to lose Naomi, it would be over me. Other than being gay, there was really nothing that anybody could object to in his behavior or his CV. I, on the other hand, had already caused one argument and anybody looking into my past wouldn’t have to search too long to find any objectionable behavior. I could only hinder his chances to adopt.

And just like I would damage the proceedings, I would damage the life he was hoping to build. My father had been the trigger for everything that happened in my childhood, actively by doling out violence at random, but also passively by marring every relationship in our house. It had been everyone for themselves. Who knew what kind of a relationship I would have had with my sister or even my mother if we hadn't always had to hope that it would be the other person who would bear the brunt of his anger? I had been no better in that respect than Claire or Joanie. How many times had they got hit because I had managed to slip away to Mikey’s?

I couldn’t be the reason for damaging Justin’s relationship with Naomi. I didn’t want him to have to choose between her and me on a daily basis. While I would never raise a hand to either one of them, my presence would certainly not be conducive to a happy home life. Naomi shouldn't have to grow up to wonder what she had done or what was wrong with her that her other parent did not love her. I could not be that man.

Alistair, being my lawyer as much as Justin’s, asked what my situation would be if something were to happen to Justin. Ms Abbott and her colleague exchanged a long look. Then Farrier answered. “Mr Kinney wouldn’t have any rights to the child unless he adopts her or applies for guardianship. Of course, depending on how far in the future we're talking about, it might be in the best interest of the child by then to keep her in the environment that she's used to.”

“But he could adopt her?” Justin asked hopefully.

“If all the parties concerned agree, it would be possible. It would be a second parent adoption much like Dr Chanders was planning  for you.” It was obvious that he didn’t think it would be desirable.

Nobody asked me what I wanted to do, so I didn’t volunteer an opinion. To me, this was a non-issue.

It was agreed that there would be another visit in three months, six months and then a final one in a year’s time. There was another walk through the house, this time with Mrs Chanders in tow, who'd never been to Britin before. Farrier made the odd remark about child safety, especially with a view to the swimming pool, which told everyone that this was considered a long-term, if not permanent, arrangement already. In the end, Justin had been granted guardianship right there and then and had applied for adoption to be finalized in a year’s time. All future visits were just a formality.

I went to work with a thumping headache.

 

 

Lindsay really caught me at a bad time when she called that afternoon, but, as usual, she was oblivious to anything but her own agenda.

“Is Gus alright?” I asked because it was unusual nowadays for Lindsay and me to have conversations for no reason at all. I supposed I was a little wary of her and when she had problems it was tiring to have to listen to them, so our contact had somewhat dwindled. I usually tried to help her out for Gus’s sake because Lindsay being happy could only benefit him.

“ _Of course, he is, but he's the reason I’m calling.”_

“Oh?”

_“Yes. You know he was considering that summer camp with the swim club?... Well, he decided to go after all... but it’s next week.”_

“He's coming here next week. I thought he'd decided against the summer camp?” I distinctly remembered discussing it with him and he'd told me that he wouldn’t mind going, but given the choice between summer camp and visiting us, he chose us. He'd said that with having a private pool, Britin would do more for his swimming than any summer camp ever could.

_“Well, he had. But now he’s changed his mind.”_

“Can I talk to him?”

_“He’s not here at the moment.”_

“Then I’ll call him tonight.”

_“He’ll be home late from the club. Maybe tomorrow. But, Brian, please don’t make this hard for him. He feels very guilty for doing this to you. It wouldn’t be fair to put any pressure on him. Maybe you shouldn’t mention it.”_

What the fuck? “Lindsay, I want to speak to my son about his plans for the summer. Don’t tell me what to say to him. He’s nearly twelve. He can tell me himself that he wants to go to the camp. I promise not to give him a hard time.”

_“Please, Brian, you know how sensitive he is. He’s always so worried about upsetting people.”_

Yeah, and it wasn’t very difficult to work out why that was. I tried to reel in my anger at the nerve of Lindsay of all people telling me not to upset our son with emotional demands. “I will speak to him tomorrow. Everything will be fine, Lindsay.”

_“Okay. But, you know, it might be better for you, too.”_

“How could not seeing my son this summer possibly be better for me?”

_“Well, you have the new baby. You’re bound to have less time for Gus now.”_

I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was not a good day for Lindsay to butt into my business. “I'll always have time for Gus. I'll speak to him tomorrow. Make sure he's available.”

_“Okay. Brian, I wanted to ask you...”_

I sighed. “How much is this camp?”

_“700 Dollars.”_

“I’ll send you a cheque.”

_“Thanks, Brian.”_

“After I’ve spoken to Gus.”

There was a pause. “ _Okay. Tomorrow night then. I’ll tell him you’ll call.”_

“You do that. I’ve gotta go. I’ll speak to you later.”

_“Bye, Brian.”_

So, it had finally happened. For a few years now, I'd been expecting Gus to lose interest in his visits to Pittsburgh. It was natural that at some stage his friends and teammates would have more allure than his father. And I supposed we weren’t that far off from the first girlfriend or boyfriend either, and then nothing else would be of interest anyway. The only thing that surprised me about this was that during my last visit, four weeks ago, he'd seemed pretty excited about coming down.

I wouldn’t give him a hard time about it. I didn’t want to be like Lindsay who had made an art form out of putting her children under pressure to suit her own emotional needs. I wanted Gus to visit me because he wanted to see me not because he would feel guilty if he didn’t. I had just hoped I would have another year or two before he lost interest.  

When I told Justin in the evening, he was as surprised as I had been. He came over and climbed into my lap and as much as I enjoyed that, I hated that he was feeling sorry for me. Pity – or comfort in the face of disappointment, as Justin called it – was still an unacceptable emotion to me. I also hated the idea that soon enough I would no longer be able to discuss these things with him or to let him distract me with sex as he was wont to do.

“Is he even going to get a place at the camp at the last minute?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I suppose that’s the reason Lindsay asked me for 700 dollars.”

“Yeah, I thought she might ask you to pay. A bit insensitive of her to ask you for money so that your son can _not_ visit you.”

“Ah well, you know Lindsay, she’s only sensitive when it concerns her.”

Justin snorted sarcastically. “Do you think he's jealous of Naomi?” he asked after a while.

“Why would he be? He has a younger sister. If anything, he would be jealous of Jenny.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

Actually, I hadn’t and I just realized that I should have done. However, this was the first day that the arrangement had started to look permanent and I was at a bit of a loss what to tell him. Yes, Naomi was here to stay and if he came down, she would be around, but after his visit I would move back into the loft and I couldn’t tell him that because I hadn’t told Justin yet and I didn’t want to lie to Gus.

But then Justin started kissing me and running his hands under my shirt, and everything else seemed unimportant for a while. Now that the decision to adopt Naomi was all but finalized, sex with Justin took on a new significance. I was very much aware that our time was limited now. I'd been expecting another two weeks, but if Gus wasn’t coming to visit, I had to admit that a quick and final separation was probably the kindest solution. If only it wasn’t so fucking gut-wrenching to even think about it.

As Justin lowered himself onto my lubed and almost painfully hard cock, two disjointed thoughts went through my head, before desire switched off my brain. One, that keeping a supply of lube stuffed under every cushion in the house wouldn't be such a good idea when Naomi started to explore her environment and two, that being with Justin was so fucking amazing that I didn't know how I would ever be able to give it up.

 

 

I got hold of Gus the next evening after the third attempt. He talked about looking forward to going to the camp in the same tone as he might have about a visit to the dentist. His attempt to put some enthusiasm behind it was painfully obvious and failed miserably. I asked him if he would rather come down to Pittsburgh because something in his voice set off alarm bells in my head.

_“It’s alright, Dad. Camp will be really cool.”_

“Gus, where are you?”

_“Home.”_

“Where are your mothers?”

_“Mom’s right here. Mama’s at a conference. She’ll be home tomorrow.”_

“Can you go to your room? I would like to talk to you alone.”

_“Okay.”_

I heard a rustling noise and then Lindsay’s voice asking him where he was going. There was silence for a while when he had obviously put his hand over the phone. Then Lindsay came on the line.

_“Brian, you promised you wouldn’t do this.”_

All my instincts kicked in at that moment. This had a horribly familiar ring to it from when she had used Gus to get me to come and visit in the past or to get me on her side when she had problems with Melanie.

“Lindsay,” I said coldly. “I want to speak to my son. Give him the damn phone back and let him go to his room, alone, or I swear to you I will be up there tomorrow to talk to him in person.”

There was a long period of silence and then Gus came back on to tell me that he was in his room now and that he was alone. I told him to shut the door.

Taking a deep breath, I told him about Naomi and how she had come to live with us. I left out many of the details, but I told him that she wouldn't interfere with his visit other than Justin having less time to spend with us.

_“Don’t you want to spend time with her?”_

“I want to spend time with _you_ , Sonnyboy. But if you would rather go to camp that’s fine, too. I know how much you enjoy swimming and being with your friends.”

_“They're not my friends, dad. They're just on the team. They hate it when I beat them.”_

“I bet they do. Gus, I want you to do what _you_ want to do. If you would rather come here, I would be very pleased. If you would rather go to camp, I would understand. It’s your decision. The baby won’t make any difference to what's going on between you and me. Ever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

There was a long pause. _“Are you sure I won’t be in the way?”_

Fucking Lindsay! What had she done this time?

“I'm quite sure.” In my head there played the same fucking mantra that I had adhered to since Lindsay had started showing her emotional imbalance: _don’t put  pressure on him! Don’t put any more pressure on him... ah fuck it!_ “I was looking forward to seeing you. Everything's arranged... if you want to.”

_“I want to. I can help with the baby. I always helped with JR.”_

“Yeah, you do that. So, I’ll keep your ticket for Sunday and I’ll pick you up at the airport. Okay?”

_“Yeah. Thanks, Dad. Will you tell mom?”_

“I will. Give her the phone. And I'll also call your mama and arrange it with her.”

_“That’s good. Thanks. I see you on Sunday.”_

“Yes. I’ll see you then.”

When Lindsay came back on the phone, I told her that Gus would be visiting me as planned and if she put any more pressure on him, there would be hell to pay.

 _“Oh, Brian, I wouldn’t have thought you'd be so cruel. He wanted to go to camp and now he has to visit you because you made him feel guilty._ ” She sounded like she was just about to dissolve into tears of sorrow for her son’s plight.

“Fuck you, Lindsay! You're not coming between me and Gus. You cannot afford that. Because if I can’t see my son, I've no reason to give you guys any more money. Now, leave him alone.” It was an idle threat, of course, because even if Gus never wanted to see me again, I would always make sure that he would be well provided for. It was also debatable whether, with both of them working, they actually needed my money in the first place.

I snapped the phone shut, only to open it again straight away to call Melanie. She was obviously at a restaurant or something similar because there was a lot of background noise and she was laughing when she answered. That stopped pretty quickly when I explained the situation to her. She excused herself and then it got quieter.

_“What do you mean, Gus wants to go to the swim camp? He doesn’t. He wants to see you and Justin. He’s been talking about it since your last visit.”_

I told her about the conversations I had with both Gus and Lindsay and she sighed. _“I thought something was up. Linz has been weird since I told her about the baby. I think she's worried that Gus will be pushed out.”_

That was a rather flattering interpretation of what was going on, in my opinion. More like she was worried that she would lose the unique hold she had over me and was punishing me for it. “Well, she’d better get over it pretty damn quick. Because I won’t allow her to interfere in my relationship with Gus.”

_“Leave it to me, Brian. Is the ticket for Sunday still valid?”_

“Yeah.”

_“I’ll sort it out. And I’ll take them to the airport myself. Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to Linz as well, for all the good it’ll do.”_

 

 

On Sunday at 13.25, Gus came out of the gate, holding tightly on to the hand of his little sister and accompanied by a flight attendant. It was the first time that the kids were flying alone and Gus didn’t let go of a squirming Jenny until she was three feet away from her father. Then he came into my arms and gave me a long hug, followed by a deep shaky exhale of relief. I just stroked his hair and pretended not to notice, until he had himself back under control. It looked like Gus having a stress-free time was back to being priority number one.

Every vacation with Gus was different. Just because he had liked something the previous time didn’t mean that he still liked it the next time he came. That went for food as much as for outings and even people. When Mel and Linz were separated, Mikey and I had made sure that Gus and Jenny could see each other every day while they were with us. Now he scoffed at the idea of spending all that time with his sister and only wanted to see her every three or four days. That was fine by me because Jenny came with Michael and Debbie, and sometimes even Ben and Hunter, attached. I really didn’t need any of that at the moment. Debbie in a swimming suit was a scary sight at the best of times.

Gus took a day or so to thaw out and relax. After that, he and I found an easy rhythm of long lie-ins and lazy days by the pool, staying up late, watching videos outside his age bracket and eating junk food. Okay, the food I didn't partake in so much. He got more and more chatty as time progressed and I tried to retain as much information as possible about friends, teachers and team mates.

He trained every day with a seriousness and an enthusiasm that was typical of his nature. Sometimes I raced against him, at other times I stood by the poolside and checked his time with a stopwatch. As he was older now and had a lot of practice, I had real trouble keeping up with him when we were racing. It was no longer a matter of letting him win. He won fair and square more than once.

We played tennis sometimes and knocked the soccer ball about a bit and he beat me on the computer every time. He obviously enjoyed surfing on a laptop that had no parental controls, even if I stayed in the room with him while he was doing it. I had to go into work only twice. Once, he came along and I left him in the art department to play about with the graphics program. The second time, he stayed home with Justin to paint, but it turned out that Naomi had been playing up all day and they never got round to painting.

Gus had a strange fascination with Naomi. She seemed to draw him whenever she was in the room. He was hovering around Justin for the first day, but didn’t touch her until Justin asked him if he wanted to hold her. At eleven, Gus was tall and his swimming had given him a lot of upper body strength. That, combined with his innate conscientiousness, made Naomi as safe with him as she was with any adult. Under Justin’s supervision, he fed her and changed her diaper and put her to bed. I watched him in awe, becoming aware yet again of how different he was from me.

One day during the second week, we were hanging onto the side of the pool, just treading water and taking a breather.

“Mom said you'd have too much to do with the baby,” he said, watching me for my reaction.

I had already worked out that it must have been something along those lines that had caused all the problems before he came. The way Gus was tuned to taking the weight off the adults around him, namely Lindsay, all she had to do was mention a few times how much work a new baby in the house would be. He would have drawn his own conclusions and tried to lighten my load and her perceived worries about it by staying away. Sometimes, I hated Lindsay for her fucking insecurities. It wasn’t the first time, they had caused heartache and distress. I gritted my teeth against the unfair burden she so carelessly heaped on our son.

“She sleeps mainly,” I said casually. “You probably remember it from when Jenny was little. Parents just muddle through. There will always be time for you, Gus.”

“Do you sometimes get up to feed her?”

“Huh?”

“Sometimes, when I’m in bed, I can hear her cry and Justin getting up. Don’t you help him?”

“No.”

“Why not? Don’t you like Naomi?”

“I like her just fine.”

“But...?”

“But what?”

“It sounded like you were going to say ‘but’ after that. You never hold her or feed her or change her. It kinda looks like you don’t like her.”

How could I explain to a child that I felt nothing but a low-grade frustration whenever I saw her? It wasn’t so much aimed at her, as at the fucked-up situation. He obviously liked her very much. I couldn’t tell him that it was no use trying to bond with her if I wasn’t sticking around much longer. The problems Naomi had brought were really not his burden to carry – nor hers. I was already dreading having to tell him that Justin and I had split up when the time came. Knowing Gus, he would probably offer to come and live with me just so that I wouldn’t be lonely.

“I don’t dislike her.”

He looked at me kind of sad. “She's my sister, right?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. If Justin and I split up, would Naomi still be Gus’s sister? Biologically, she was no less related to him than Jenny was. And if Mel and Linz split up, Jenny would always remain his sister. I supposed to give Naomi equal status to Jenny, I would have to adopt her, but nobody in the family had ever given a rat’s ass about legal status. And there was no doubt in my mind that Gus would still see Justin and Naomi during his vacations even if he be would staying at the loft with me for future visits.

“Yeah, she's your sister as much as Jenny is.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, cool.” I splashed some water over him and we started to have a water fight. It was a distraction, but I was still mulling over his question. If Gus had noticed how ambivalent I felt about the baby, then Justin sure as hell had noticed it, too, and as she got older, I wouldn’t be able to hide it from Naomi either. It really was time to step up and man up. Gus would be going home on Saturday and I'd better be leaving the same day.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**PART EIGHT**

Gus and I were sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for his flight to be called. We had already been to the shop to buy him some chocolate and a puzzle book, as well as two comics and some garish teen magazine, all of which he had stowed in his knapsack. I had got myself a latte.

Justin had stayed at home because he wasn’t comfortable yet with taking Naomi out to public places. He was always worried that he would forget some item that would prove vital for her survival while she was out. So far, he'd only taken her to see family, mainly his mother, Debbie and the Chanders.

Gus was flying back alone. Mel and Linz had considered Jenny too young to stay as long as Gus and Michael had gone up the previous weekend to deliver her home. I was concerned how Gus was feeling about being on his own on the flight, but it seemed that I was more worried than he was. He'd told me that he didn’t mind, that he'd been flying for years and he had stopped just short of telling me not to worry. I didn’t think that he wouldn’t be safe – he would be accompanied by a flight attendant after all – no, I was always worried that my son was lonely. He was altogether too serious for his age.

I was just remembering how often we'd been here before over the years when I'd taken him home after each visit and how he could no longer swing his feet backwards and forwards under the plastic chair because he'd gotten so tall. His birthday was about a month away, so it wouldn’t be too long until I saw him again. Luckily, he had left a few hints as to what presents he might like, although I didn’t think the munchers would appreciate it if I bought him a quad bike and it wouldn’t be very practical in Toronto either. However, there was nothing stopping me from having one in the garage for his next visit.

“Dad?”

I looked at him and smiled, raising my eyebrows questioningly for him to continue.

“I really like Naomi. She's really cute.”

I waited, trying to keep my smile natural, wondering where he was going with this.

“I don’t mind her being my sister.”

That was it, apparently, because he stopped and looked at me expectantly.

“Uhm... okay. Why are you telling me this?”

He sighed a little. “I’m not jealous of her. I don’t mind you spending time with her.”

“I never expected you to be jealous, Gus. My relationship with you has nothing to do with anybody else. Not your mothers, not Justin and not your sisters. You're my son. You will always be my son. If I had a dozen more sons, that would still not change anything between you and me. Nothing will ever change that unless you want it to.”

He gave me a smile not dissimilar to the one Justin usually gave me when I said something... nice, but he thought I was off topic. I had obviously missed the point, like I so often did when it came to these matters. It was my turn to sigh and it didn’t help that I had a sense of urgency, due to expecting his flight to be called any minute now.

“Why don’t you just say what you mean as best you can. I can take it. I won’t be upset or angry. I just don’t understand at the moment.”

“I don’t mind you having another child, Dad. You can be nice to Naomi in front of me. I won’t be upset. Mama always says that love grows. It doesn’t mean that you love me less. It just means that there's more love now. It came with Naomi when she was born.”

Melanie and I had never really liked each other and maybe we never would, even after developing some mutual respect, but she was, without a doubt, an astounding mother. Giving her my parental rights had been the best gift I could ever have given my son.

“Your mother's very smart, isn’t she? I wasn’t worried about hurting your feelings, Gus. But Naomi is more Justin’s than she is mine.”

“Is that what’s making you sad?”

I nearly choked on my coffee. “What makes you think I’m sad?”

He just shrugged.

“Gus?”

“You look sad when Justin and Naomi are around.”

Inwardly, I cursed Lindsay. Her antics over the years had made Gus so fine-tuned to adult emotions that you couldn’t hide anything from him. He shouldn’t have to watch the people around him with such care and he most certainly shouldn’t take it upon himself to fix his parents’ lives. At his age, he shouldn’t even notice these things.

“Gus, listen to me. If I'm sad, I will change the things in my life that make me sad and then I'll be happy. I’m not saying that I am sad. But if I were, I would fix it. You don’t have to worry about it or try to do it for me. Everybody has to fix their own problems. If you need help with that, you can ask me or your mama and if I need help, I'll ask, but I'm very good at fixing my own problems. I don’t want you to worry about it. You made me very happy by coming to see me. And it’s nice of you to want to make me feel better, but I’m fine, really. It’s not your job to worry about me. It’s my job to worry about you.” 

“Is that in the Father’s Handbook?” he asked, smiling. I had used that expression many times before.

“It’s rule number two.”

“What’s rule number one?”

I was glad that we were alone because he could get me to do and say things that I would deny to my dying day to anybody else.

“Unconditional love.”

He smiled. “I love you, too, Dad.”

I was a little relieved that his flight was called at that moment because it was getting altogether too soppy for me. My flight instinct was kicking in with a vengeance and what eleven-year-old boy would understand that his father felt uncomfortable with telling him that he loved him? I could barely understand it myself. I knew I loved him, but saying it to him? Two completely different things. Give me showering him with presents instead any day. At least, if he dismissed those, he wouldn’t be completely rejecting me.

I checked him in and handed him over to the flight attendant after he'd given me a long hug. He turned just before he went through the gate and raised his hand like an adult would, not waving, just a hand raised in goodbye.

I went and smoked four cigarettes in the short-term car park before I got in the car.

 

 

Gus was right, of course. I couldn’t help this overwhelming feeling of despair whenever I looked at Justin, regardless of whether Naomi was also there or not. The very idea of spending the rest of my life away from him filled me with dread because I knew from experience how miserable I would be. The only solution was to no longer hesitate. Gus was gone. My two weeks’ grace were over and I no longer had any excuse to linger. And how the hell was it possible that I hadn't once even hinted to Justin at what I was planning to do? What had happened to using these two weeks to gently prepare him?

I had deluded myself that I just didn’t want to mar Gus’s vacation. If I had told Justin that I was leaving, he would have been upset. Gus would have picked up on it. We might have even had arguments that I really didn’t want Gus to witness. Or Justin might have asked me to leave straight away, rather than wait until Gus had left. I didn’t want to put Gus through having to relocate to the loft in the middle of his visit. For a while, I told myself that I just wanted to give Justin a little more time to be happy and get used to life with Naomi without distractions. Yeah, I was so full of shit.

Justin would undoubtedly hate me. But it was preferable to the struggle and heartache it would cause if I stayed. The slow rot of resentment on all fronts would be my worst nightmare come true. At least this way, the child wouldn't suffer. Justin might though. He was holding it together pretty well, considering how close he and Daphne had been and I thought that was mostly down to focussing on Naomi instead of his grief. But when I was gone, he would have another thing to grieve. Hopefully, Naomi would see him through that as well. He had always been better at separations than I.

I could hear him talking to the baby in her room when I got home and calculated that I would have about an hour to pack the most necessary items, until he was finished with her and I would have to face him. She always woke up around this time in the afternoons, so she must have just woken up. Good timing.

Or not.

I had the three suits which I wanted to take for now spread on the bed and was folding shirts and pants. Of course, I would have to come back for most of my stuff, but these clothes and my files would do for the first few days. It wouldn’t be difficult to find a day when he wasn’t around to pick up the rest. He would probably never want to see me again after today anyway.

“Going somewhere?”

I whirled around, startled because I hadn’t heard him approach. I nearly dropped the shirt in my hands, too.

“Where's Naomi?”

“I just put her down. She woke up early for her afternoon feed. Care to answer my question?” His voice was dangerously calm.

“I’m moving into the loft.” I put the shirt in the open suitcase to gain some time.

“Why?”

I straightened up and looked at him. “I wasn’t joking when I said I didn’t want a baby. I just can’t. And it wouldn’t be fair on Naomi or you. But I realize that you need her and she needs you. So this is the only way.”

“We’re breaking up?” He was still calm and I didn’t like it one bit.

I nodded and went into the walk-in wardrobe to get more shirts. When I came back out, he was still standing in the doorway. “So, let me get this straight. You’ve decided that I should keep Naomi because I ‘need’ her and she needs me. And you also decided that you can’t be part of this, so you’re leaving?”

“That’s it,” I confirmed. I busied myself with putting the shirts into the suitcase so that I didn’t have to look at him. I didn’t think I could bear to see how destroyed he was.

When I turned around to go back into the wardrobe, he took three quick steps and blocked my way.

“That is the biggest piece of bullshit I've ever heard you say and, believe me, that's quite an achievement!” Okay, not so much destroyed as seething with suppressed rage. I tried to walk around him, but he moved sideways to block me again.

“No!” he said then.

“No?” I was almost amused.

“No. You will not leave. You can’t.”

“I can and I will.”

“No, you won’t. Because Brian Kinney doesn't go back on his word.”

“My word? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“We had a deal. You asked me to choose between you and Naomi and I did. I chose you! No conditions. No strings attached. You. Making me choose implied that if I chose you, you would actually be there to be chosen. It was a deal between you and me, a binding contract, I choose you and you will choose me, otherwise the whole choosing thing would be pointless. That was the deal: I choose to be with you and you will then be with me. I did my part of it and I was willing to face the consequences, however painful, and now I’m holding you to your end of the deal.”

“The situation's changed, Justin.”

“True, but it wasn’t changed by me. You did that! You unilaterally decided that I should keep Naomi, which I'm very grateful for, but it doesn’t alter my initial choice and therefore you can’t get out of the deal because of it. If you didn’t want to live with me, then you shouldn't have made me choose. You said, it’s either Naomi or me. That means that if I choose you, there will _be_ a you and for longer than a couple of weeks. If you didn’t want her, you shouldn’t have said what you said at the first meeting. I would have let her go. It was _your_ choice that she would stay. Yours alone. And now you’re stuck with her. And me. A deal is a deal, Brian, you taught me that.”  

Damn, he was good. I had broken a lot of my own rules for him, but those had just been the rules that I'd set for myself. This was different. This was about a fundamental moral obligation. I had always prided myself on keeping my word, no matter how hard it was for me to go through with it. I couldn't really break a deal and still look at myself in the mirror every day without being ashamed. And he was right. Making him choose had been a deal. Verbal, no handshake and not even explicitly voiced, but it was a deal nevertheless. He had a right to expect me to honor it. Naomi still being here didn’t negate it one bit. That hadn't been his decision. His wish certainly, but the decision had been mine.

“Justin,” I said, trying to reason with him. “You don’t want me around. Just think what it will do to Naomi.”

“Do you have any idea what an arrogant piece of shit you are?” He raised his voice for the first time, just slightly.

I shrugged. I had been called worse and it was mainly true.

“You're such an asshole! First, you put me through the absolute _agony_ of having to choose between you and Naomi. Then you change your mind without telling me because, God knows, the great god Kinney doesn't have to discuss these things with the likes of me. Then you almost fuck it all up the next minute. And now you tell me – or don’t tell me since you’re in here packing without a word – that you never considered hanging around for it but, of course, you haven’t bothered to discuss that with me either. You just thought you could make all these decisions for me. So, no! It’s just, _no_. It doesn’t work like that. _We_ don’t work like that. We haven’t worked like that for a long time.”

“Justin...”

“Do you have any idea how painful it was for me to make that decision? To know that I would lose my one chance to be a father? That I would lose my last connection to Daph? That I would lose Naomi? And you know what? It was never even a contest. It was always you, from the moment I walked out of the loft. Not for one minute did I ever think I would choose Naomi. And then you turned around and said okay and I thought you must have known how hard it was for me and relented because of that. But you didn’t, did you? You have no clue how I feel. How much I love you. How I could never live without you. And I won’t. You chose. I didn’t make you choose. You did that all by yourself. You chose Naomi for me and now you will have to live with your decision the same way I would have had to live with mine.”

I really had no argument for that. It was true. I had made the decision all by myself because I _did_ know how hard it was for him and I didn't want to see him suffer. He hadn’t forced me into it like I had him. I had done that, me, no one else. And now I was trying to make him bear the consequences for what I'd done. Suddenly, it occurred to me that his whole argument was very well thought-out.

“You knew,” I said almost accusingly.

“That you were gonna bail on me like the fucking coward you are? Too right, I knew. I could see it in your eyes every time you looked at me. I knew it almost from the first day. The way you wouldn’t go anywhere near Naomi.” He stepped closer, blazing with anger and I stepped back. “The way you looked at me as if I would disappear the next minute.” I took another step back. “Hell, even the way you’ve been fucking me as if it was the last time every single time.” The next step made me hit the bed and I sat down with a thump. “I know a goodbye when I see it. I know _you_ , Brian.”

He pushed me onto my back and straddled me. Almost casually, he swiped the half-packed suitcase off the bed, which hit the floor on its side and spilled all my clothes. I made to get up, but he pushed me back down and pinned my wrists to the bed.

“Don’t even think about getting up or going anywhere.”

“Justin, we're on top of my suits.” I didn’t like to think what damage we were causing them.

“Do I look like I care? Tell me that this is the last time we're having an argument about us bringing Naomi up together. Tell me that we're doing this together.”

“Justin...”

“Tell me!” he hissed and he didn’t sound in the least bit playful despite the obvious erotic connotations our situation had. He was angry still, very angry.

“This is the last time we're going to argue about this.”

“Because we're now going to find a way to make this work – together,” he prompted.

“Yeah,” I said.

He leaned down and kissed me and when we broke apart, he licked along my jawline and the shell of my ear. I tried hard to keep my thoughts and my words coherent. “We're still on top of my suits.”

“Yes, we are. And now I’m gonna fuck you on top of your suits and all I wanna hear from you is ‘yes’ and ‘more’.”

I stared up at him and he was magnificent, really. He was slightly flushed from the argument and his eyes were still blazing and somehow I realized that I'd been a first class asshole as usual and that making amends might have to include having to dry clean my three favorite suits.

“You realize that I will fuck you senseless afterwards,” I said.

He smiled for the first time. “I’m counting on it.”

 

 

But it wasn’t like all our other arguments, where we would scream at each other and then fuck the problem away. Nothing was solved and nothing was suddenly right. I'd agreed to stick around, so I had to find another solution to the problem, but it didn’t change my feelings one bit. Over the years, I had learned the hard way that you couldn’t just turn your feelings off when they were no longer convenient or wanted. Now, I had to realize that you couldn’t turn them on at will, either.

Justin didn't push. I came home late from work every day, so I only saw Naomi for her last feed of the day. When she started crying, he would get up without a word and see to her. Maybe once or twice that week he dumped her in my lap while he went into the kitchen to prepare her bottle, but he never suggested that I should feed her. I held her in my arms and she was usually grumpy because she was hungry, but I didn’t mind one way or the other.

She was cute, I gave her that. Luckily, Justin wasn’t into pink, so her clothes weren't too girly or frilly. The times between her feeds were getting longer, too, at least the ones that I saw at night, when she had started to sleep six, seven hours. It didn’t change the fact that Justin was incredibly tired and seemed to be walking around in a permanent haze. If I didn’t go to bed the minute he did, he would invariably be fast asleep by the time I got there.

Yes, our sex life suffered, but that was only because we were used to fucking two, three times a day, every day. I suspected that what we had now, would have made any breeder husband deliriously happy, whether there was an infant in the house or not. It wasn’t that Justin wasn’t interested as much anymore either, it was just that he was too exhausted to stay awake. I supposed that I could count myself lucky that he didn’t fall asleep in the middle of a fuck, but I was extra careful not to provide too relaxing a foreplay or to drag it out too long. And I didn’t even expect a second round anymore. Weekends were a little better because he would simply return to bed after the early morning feed and he wouldn’t be too tired then. And there was nothing stopping us from fucking during the day.

But I felt no longer comfortable at Britin. My retreat was gone and now it felt like I was under scrutiny here even more than I was everywhere else. While he never put pressure on me, I knew that he was just biding his time. He expected me to one day just wake up and be as besotted with the baby as he was. Or he suspected that I was just not owning up to my feelings, that I secretly doted on her but wouldn’t admit it, like I was expecting him to go ‘Hah! I knew it!’ if I showed some affection.

He was wrong. I showed exactly as much or as little affection as I felt, which was pitiful enough. I remembered how uninvolved I had been when Jenny was born. Granted, at the time my relationship with Michael had been strained and the whole custody battle had made me want to run away screaming, but what it came down to was that I had no more feelings for Jenny than I had for any other baby I had ever come across, with the exception of Gus. And I felt the same way about Naomi.    

 

 

On Thursday, I was running a little late and Mrs Hanson turned up for work just as I was getting ready to leave. She greeted me in her usual friendly manner, then asked if she could have a word with me. With most other people, I would have pointed out how late I was, but she'd never been so formal before, except when I had interviewed her for the job, so I asked her into my office.

She closed the door behind her and declined a seat. “Mr Brian,” she said and she looked straight at me. “I wanted to ask you if the baby was staying here permanently now?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and looked down at her shoes. Well, here was one person at least who wasn’t jumping up and down with joy over it, as everyone apart from me was wont to do.

“Is there a problem?” I prodded gently. I liked this woman. She was quiet and unassuming. She came, she did her job, she left. There was no prying into our affairs, no drama, no excessive chit-chat. Justin liked her and so did Gus. I trusted her with my key, my house and my son. So far, she had taken everything that went on in our house in her stride, including supplies of lube everywhere, which she had to have come across during cleaning. And she even managed to cook edible meals that weren’t laden with fat and sugar.

“Yesterday, when Naomi was up, Mr Justin got a phone call. He said it was about work and he asked me to look after the baby while he went into the office. When he came back out, I'd already fed her because she was crying so much and I couldn’t bear to listen to that.”

She paused and I was hoping this would not go where I thought this was going. If he'd scolded her for helping out, I would have to have a serious talk with him. He was extremely possessive about the kid. He'd told me about his phone call from his agent, but he never mentioned anything about Mrs Hanson.

“Mr Brian,” she said and I suppressed a smile like I always did when she called me that. “I'm 58 and I've brought up three children. I love working here. But I can not look after a baby. I’m too old for that, especially when she gets older and becomes more active. Now, I didn’t mind feeding her yesterday and I didn’t mind last week when I sat with her while Mr Justin got changed, but I need to make it clear that my job can not include babysitting. I can not look after Naomi while Mr Justin goes out or even while he does other things in the house. He hasn’t painted recently, but if he starts that again, I won’t be able to look after the child.”

“Of course not. That’s not your job. How often does he ask you to help?”

“Just the twice so far, but I wanted to point it out, so that we all know what to expect.”

“Quite right. I'll speak to Mr...I'll speak to Justin.”

“Thank you.”

She hesitated and as much as I wanted to leave, I forced myself to wait patiently to see if she had another matter to discuss.

“Mr Brian,” she said finally. “I don’t mean to interfere, but Mr Justin looks exhausted. He needs to ask for help from someone before he runs himself into the ground.”

I smiled sardonically. Yeah, good luck trying to tell him that. “I know, Mrs Hanson. Thank you for your concern.”

She nodded and went to start work in the kitchen.

I went to work after that, but in the evening I mentioned it to Justin. He seemed upset that she hadn't spoken to him herself. I wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t. Maybe she considered me her only employer because I'd been the one who had hired her and she had worked here for a couple of years before she even met Justin. Or maybe it was about age and Justin looking as young as he did still. That would surely piss him off. He never appreciated that particular blessing enough. I doubted that she had told me because she felt she couldn’t speak to Justin. There wasn’t a person in the world who wasn’t comfortable talking to him. Well, maybe his father.

In the end, I left him to sort it out himself. And I never mentioned that she thought he looked tired, although I had to agree.

 

 

The first weekend after Gus left, I went out on Saturday night. I asked Justin if he wanted to come with me, but he just rolled his eyes. Maybe I should have given him some advance warning and not asked him just before I was going into the shower to get ready. But just why it should come as a surprise to him that I wanted to go out was beyond me. We'd always gone out most weekends and I did own Babylon, so I had to show my face occasionally.

Did he really expect me to stay home on a Saturday night, especially after Gus had just been here for two weeks? Was this what he wanted? Did he expect me to want it, too? He should know me better than that. Maybe he had expected some consideration from me, either by announcing my plans in advance so he could be prepared or by sharing his dedication and staying home. But I wanted to do things spontaneously, not file my plans with him in triplicate the day before. This was what I'd been trying to tell him all along. That it wasn’t going to work. That he could hold me to my word and make me stay, but it still wouldn't magically work just because he had decided that it should. I knew it wouldn’t. I had seen it before. Hell, I had lived through it in my parents’ house.

Maybe I wanted to show him that, for me, nothing had changed, that he might have got his way, but he was still wrong about so many things or maybe I just wanted to get away from him and his expectations. It had got to a point where sitting at the bar in Woody’s was more relaxing than being at home. I could get steadily drunk and, other than a stream of guys hitting on me, I was blissfully alone.

I thought about what had happened over the last few weeks and how Justin had got exactly what he wanted. He always did. This was why I had always avoided relationships. Because they made you weak. Suddenly, it was no longer about what you wanted and what made you happy, it was all about him. You couldn’t watch him being upset and his beaming smile of happiness meant more to you than your convenience and you had to do what he wanted anyway because you would be wretched without him.

Justin didn't seem to have that problem. He had walked away from me more than once. He could do that because he knew I would always take him back. And what had I done? I'd never even got out the fucking bedroom door, because Justin decided I had given my word. Well, he was right about that, but still, how pathetic was I, that I had stayed because he said I couldn’t go? I wasn’t stupid. I realized that if I had really wanted to leave, I would have. Which only meant that I'd been quite happy for him to stop me. I'd wanted him to stop me. It gave me an excuse for not having to go through with leaving him. 

I knew, and had known for a long time, that Justin held all the aces in this game. In fact, when I looked back on our relationship, I was very much aware that this had been the case almost from the beginning or at least since prom. Only, before the bombing, I'd been unwilling to admit it and a lot of my behavior had been down to proving to myself and others that he had no hold over me. After I had proposed to him, that seemed just stupid. Everybody knew anyway and in the long run, behaving like an asshole just led to me being on my own and miserable. That was the reason I put in so much effort when he moved to New York. Because Justin was my one shot at happiness and I was not throwing that away or letting it go without a fight just to prove some obscure point. My life had always been about getting my needs met. He was what I needed. I knew that much.  

It was difficult to explain what exactly bothered me about our relationship. In general, I had to admit to myself that I was happy, unexpectedly so, but whenever there was a problem, whenever we had a disagreement, I always lost. Even when I seemed to win the argument, I still lost. What really got to me was that, after over a decade with him, I still couldn’t get a handle on my feelings. In all other aspects of my life I was in complete control. I was my own boss. I answered to no one. I pretty much dictated all other relationships in my life, with maybe the exception of Gus, where I did not want to dictate and control. But with Justin, I was powerless. He wanted, he got, every single fucking time. He had free rein in everything.

Naomi was a perfect example for this. She wasn't a problem he'd created – most of our problems nowadays were like that, just circumstances that became problems because we disagreed on how to handle them. I had insisted, like I usually did and he had given in. So I seemingly won this argument. He chose me and I won. Or did I? Because when it came down to it, I couldn’t bear to see him hurt and gave him what he wanted anyway. I always did. The only thing that made it bearable was that he never abused his advantage. Mostly, it seemed like he was unaware of it.

But sometimes I was pretty convinced that Justin knew all this. When I felt really paranoid, I wondered if he just put up a fight for form’s sake and then gave in, knowing full well that in the end I would let him have what he wanted anyway. Logically, I knew that it wasn’t true, but when I was angry, it seemed damned possible to me. When I was angry, I lost pretty much all reason.

And I was angry with him for a myriad of things: for making me stay, or rather for making me accept the excuse he had offered for me ‘having’ to stay; for dreading being without him so much that I had gone back on my decision; for fearing his resentment more than my own so that I was now stuck with a child and a life that I hadn’t wanted; for expecting things from me that I simply could not deliver and for my feeling guilty and inadequate because I couldn’t; for making me frustrated that I had lost control of my own life.

Yes, my overwhelming feeling was one of intense resentment. It wasn’t aimed at Naomi, as I had expected, but rather at Justin. I resented him because I wasn’t able or willing to live without him and because he had made me stay when I knew I shouldn’t. And I resented that he had brought Naomi into the house in the first place. Hell, I was beginning to resent that he'd ever been friends with Daphne fucking Chanders to start with. And really and truly, because he had made me stay, whatever happened now, however bad it would become, was all down to him, right? It wasn’t as if I hadn’t warned him.

Even I was surprised at the speed with which it had happened. It had only taken a week for me to built up to this degree of resentment. And resentment and recreational intoxicants had never been a good combination for me.  

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

**PART NINE**

I awoke in the loft on Sunday around lunchtime, generally feeling ten years younger. Meaning, I had a thumping headache, a god-awful taste in my mouth and my stomach was ready to turn in on itself. I was really getting too old for this shit. Justin and I still got drunk and high at the weekends – frequently – but never to an extent that I didn’t know how I'd got home the night before. I wondered how I'd accomplished that because I didn’t remember seeing any of the gang at Babylon.

I sat up on the side of the bed and had to stop there because I was feeling sick, or sick _er_ , now that I was upright. Bits and pieces from the night before came back to me and none of them made me feel any better. I distinctly remembered the backroom, though not what I had done there, or with whom. A terrible thought struck me and I fished for the bin, trying to grab it without moving too much. Oh fuck!

I threw up all over the condom in the bucket and then went into the bathroom to throw up some more in the toilet. Great, just fucking great. Justin was going to kill me. Hell, the way I felt, I might just save him the trouble. What the fuck was I going to do now?

I went to have a long shower, got dressed and cleaned up. Then I checked my voicemails. There were two from Justin, one from the night before, asking if I was planning on staying at the loft and the second from this morning, asking me to call him. Yeah, fat chance of that happening! I was just pondering what to do next when there was a knock on the door. For a moment, I was worried that it might be Justin, because I really wasn’t ready for that yet, but then I realized that he would just come in.

It was Michael.

“Hey. I got a message last night from one of your minions at Babylon, asking me to come and get you. Didn’t get it till this morning though. I’m happy to see you made it home all right without my help.”

“Yeah, some good Samaritan brought me home.” I walked into the kitchen and switched the coffeemaker on.

“Really? Anyone I know? Because I thought you didn’t bring guys to the loft anymore.”

“I don’t and I have no clue who it was. Not even a vague idea.”

He settled himself on one of the barstools. “Wow, you must have been fucked up.”

“Yeah, I fucked up all right.”

He grinned and then stopped and his face took on that look of disappointed disbelief that he did so well. “You didn’t!”

“Yep, I sure did. And I have the condom to prove it. Or did have, before I flushed all the evidence down the toilet.”

He was quiet for a bit and I decided that a bottle of water would go down well before I attempted caffeine.

“It could be worse,” he said then, still not quite upbeat but at least in comforting mode now. I doubted that he could come up with anything to back up that statement, but he did: “At least, you did _use_ condoms.”

Yeah , there was that. A hot flash of belated fear went through me when I realized that I'd been in no fit state to actually make sure of that. It must have been pure instinct, ingrained by years of practice, or maybe the other guy'd had a bit more sense than I. I wished I knew who it was, so I could thank him. Ah well, all I had to do was go to Babylon next week. I could always spot the recent fucks. There was a certain uncalled-for familiarity they all had about them the first time they saw me afterwards. It usually took no more than a cold stare to cure them of that. That had failed to work only once.

“Is this the first time you fell off the wagon?”

“Yep.” I had lasted just over eighteen months. I supposed that it was a hell of a lot longer than most people would have given me credit for when we started, including myself. I missed tricking. I missed the excitement of the chase, the moment when I managed to bend the other guy to my will, the feeling of desirability it gave me. I loved sex with Justin, but sometimes I longed for a fuck where I didn’t have to take the other guy’s feelings into account all the time. Those two were completely different things and given the choice, I would choose Justin every time. That didn’t mean that I didn’t miss the other kind. Fortunately, I had discovered that I loved barebacking more. Only now, I had completely fucked that up. Was anybody surprised?

“Have you told him yet?” Michael asked after a while.

“Nope.”

“He’ll understand. What brought this on then?”

I shrugged. I doubted very much that Justin would understand. I hadn’t when I had thought that he'd done the same thing with Daphne, although how I could have gone so far off the rails to even think that was still a mystery to me. Jealousy was a really tough one for me. It was so far removed from my self-image that each time it hit me, it came as a complete surprise.

“He’s always tired. And he never wants to go out.”

He stared at me for a moment, then he laughed. “Do you have any idea how breeder-like that sounds?”

I glared at him. “I’m glad you find this so entertaining.”

“So you two don’t fuck anymore?” he asked, trying to bring his amusement under control.

“It’s not that. It’s just... it doesn’t seem as important anymore. It’s always rushed and... I don’t know... I feel like it comes second, like I come second... in everything.”

It was only after the words had come out of my mouth that I realized how true they were. And how pathetic. I was jealous of a baby? First Daphne, now Naomi? Really, it couldn’t get much worse, could it? I put my head down on my folded arms on the countertop and decided that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I just wanted it to stop, all of it, Daphne being dead, Naomi living in our house, Justin being so pre-occupied all the time, me being such a stupid asshole.

Michael’s hand was warm on my back. He had come around the kitchen island and was standing next to me and when I straightened up, it was natural and familiar to put my arms around him. Comforting.

“You're always going to be the most important person in his life,” he said, his arms circling my waist. “Nothing and no one will ever change that. It’s just that, for a little while, Naomi will take up more of his time than you. It doesn’t mean anything at all. He loves you more than anything. He always has.”

“Like you?” I muttered into his shoulder. I was such a shit. Just because I was feeling low didn’t give me the right to manipulate Michael like I'd done way too many times in the past. But getting him to express his love for me had always been my fall-back position. That was natural and familiar, too. And so very comforting. 

“Yeah, like me,” he said softly and rubbed my back. When we separated, he grinned. “Well, apart from Ben, of course... and JR... and Hunter.”

“And your mother?” I grinned back at him.

“Nah, I definitely love you more than her. I’m getting too old to think my mother is the best thing in my life.”

“Liar.”

He laughed again. “So, you want me to drive you home?”

“Nah, but you can give me a ride to the club. The ‘vette’s there.”

 

 

The expression ‘coming home with your tail between your legs’ pretty much covered how I felt when I got to Britin, mainly because I thought that it was the most likely place Justin would kick me when I told him what I'd done. I followed the baby’s wailing into the kitchen.

“Oh good, you’re here,” he said. “I dropped her bottle. I have to make a new one.”

He dumped her into my arms and, miraculously, Naomi shut up and looked at me with big dark eyes. It was the first time that she'd shown any kind of awareness of me.

“Typical,” Justin groused, as if I had this effect on her all the time. He started gathering the stuff he needed for mixing up another bottle. “Where did you go?” he added conversationally. Why could he never be angry when he had reason to be, albeit unknowingly?

“Woody’s. Babylon. The loft.”

He nodded, concentrating on measuring out the formula, so I had occasion to look at him at leisure. He did look tired, with faint circles under his eyes and lines on his face that shouldn't have been there. For about two months now, he'd been looking after the baby almost single-handedly. For one, he was pretty possessive, probably fearing that she would be taken away if he showed any signs of being less than perfect at it. Now, it was also a case of his support system having dwindled a little, with both Debbie and Jennifer coming out to the house no more than once a week, if that.

It wasn’t so much that either woman had lost interest, but it was difficult for Debbie to make her way out here and both she and Jennifer had jobs and partners. Justin still went round to see them once a week, as well as the Chanders, but visits to the relatives didn't exactly give him a break. I, of course, had never lent a hand to begin with.

Naomi was getting restless again, so I wandered off into the lounge and took a seat in one of the armchairs, grabbing a bib and a cloth on the way. I rocked her a little on my lap and made a face. She smiled. That was new. I couldn’t help smiling back. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. I just didn’t like that she was living in my house, or rather I didn’t think I could live up to the expectations that came with it.

Justin came in with the bottle and put out his hands to take her, but I settled her more comfortably into the crook of my arm and made a gesture for the bottle. He frowned as he handed it to me – reluctantly. Then he settled into the chair opposite me. There was nothing of the expected amusement or indulgence on his face as he watched me feed her. Maybe his possessiveness applied to me as well.

“So what are you apologizing for?” he asked finally, in a tired voice.

“I’m not apologizing for anything.”

“Well, this is the first time you’re feeding her, so I’m assuming you're trying to get me into a good mood.”  He really did know me too well. When I didn’t answer, he added: “Or are you just trying to get me into bed as quickly as possible? Because you don’t have to try very hard for that. I’m quite willing.” There was a small smile on his face, but it was really nothing compared to what he usually showed me. He looked like he could barely keep his eyes open, so getting him into bed would probably result in sleeping rather than fucking.

“Good to know,” I said as casually as I could. “But we should add some ingredients to that.”

He smirked. “Toys?”

“Condoms.”

His smirk froze and there was a flash of pain before his face blanked completely. “Are you serious?”

I nodded, rolling in my lips to help me keep my face neutral.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Not why the condoms. Why did you do it?”

I shrugged. “I was drunk and high.” I couldn’t bring myself to add an apology. I felt like I'd been pushed and pushed over the last few weeks and I'd reached my limit. Having to grovel was not in my repertoire at the moment. However apologetic and remorseful I'd felt all day, when it came down to it, the words just wouldn’t come. The whole thing had started with me feeling off balance. To apologize would mean tipping the balance further in his favor. I was always apologizing, even if I rarely, if ever, did it in so many words.

“Business as usual then,” he remarked and got up and left the room.

Now that was just unfair. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t toed the line for the past year and a half, and not made a fuss about it either. Okay, so this whole monogamy thing had been kind of my idea, but still...

I looked down at Naomi, who had just finished her bottle. “Looks like your daddy’s gonna be sulking for a while.” Naomi pulled a face, then burped and dribbled some milk down her chin. When I wiped it away, she pulled another face and filled her diaper. Great. So much for getting support from that side.

When I took her into her bedroom, I noticed for the first time that we had acquired a changing table and, in typical Justin fashion, everything you could possibly need was arranged within easy reach on the shelf above. The crib I had noticed before and had wondered who'd helped him take it down and bring it over, since he had asked me to help him with that when we'd gone to Daphne’s place. Maybe he'd managed to do it on his own after all. Justin could be very determined when he wanted to be.

I hadn’t changed a diaper since Gus was a baby and rarely even then, but, really, how difficult could it be? Well, it took me a lot longer than expected because I hadn’t anticipated how awkward all the nooks and crannies were that girls were equipped with. The smell did nothing for my residual hangover either. I'd hoped to put her straight to bed, but she didn’t look in the least bit tired, so I stood by the window in her room with her until she was. I realized only now why Justin always talked to her. She seemed very attentive to my voice until she finally became drowsy.

When I looked for him afterwards, I couldn’t find Justin anywhere in the house. His studio was locked, which he didn’t usually do when he was in there, but it wasn't unheard of either. It would have been locked if he wasn’t in there, too, so that didn’t tell me anything. There was no music coming from it. I retreated to my office.

I didn’t see Justin for the rest of the evening, but I heard him with Naomi later. He usually gave her a bath in the evenings because it made her sleep better. When I went to bed around midnight, he was already asleep. I sighed and deposited the condoms I had bought that afternoon in the drawer in the bedside cabinet and went to bed.

“I have just one question,” he said, without turning towards me. “Was it punishment?”

I honestly would have preferred for him to have some kind of outburst, but Justin was never one to be obliging with his reactions. “Punishment for what? I was fucked up and I can’t even remember it.”

“Were you safe?”

“Looked like it.”

That got a reaction. “You took him to the loft?”

“I think it was more a case of him taking me to the loft. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about him or what we did.” That wasn’t quite true any longer. By now, I vaguely remembered a guy with dark hair and a lot of tattoos.

There was a long pause. Then he turned to look at me. “Does this mean we’re back to tricking?”

 _Shout! Scream! Punch me!_ But he didn’t. He just looked at me with a blank expression, as if showing some emotion was just too much effort. “No. I was fucked up. I didn’t plan it and wouldn't have done it if I’d been sober.” It was as much of an apology as I was capable of at that moment.

But when I pushed into him a little while later, after putting on a condom, I was as sorry as I could possibly be. For myself because I loved fucking raw, but even more for him because he deserved better than this, better than me.

“I’ll get tested in six weeks, and then again in six months and we can go back to normal,” I said, when I spooned up against him afterwards. “If you want.”

Justin just nodded.

 

 

For a few days, Justin was extremely passive during sex, which was really not normal for him. It was almost as if he just went along with it. But then one day, he was back to his old behavior, giving as good as he took and showing his usual enjoyment of all things sexual. It was such a relief that afterwards I said, “Well, that was more like it.” It just slipped out, I hadn’t meant to actually talk about it.

His response was deliberately casual. “Well, I’m not going to not enjoy fucking just because you fucked up.” And that was the end of that conversation.

However, the condoms got in the way in more ways than one. For starters, Justin refused to have anything to do with them. He refused to touch my cock when it was sheathed and he never put it on me anymore, which he had always enjoyed before, using his hands or mouth to stimulate me to a point of frantic need while he was doing it. Now, he rarely even looked at me when I put it on.

In a sense, I had always enjoyed that little delay in the procedure that usually meant my fucking partner would be even more desperate by the time I pushed into him. And I had especially loved that little groan that Justin sometimes gave when I had to suit up, that indicated his impatience.

But we'd been fucking raw for quite a while now and the delay seemed to interrupt and tone down the action rather than enhance it. In those few seconds, I always cursed myself for my own stupidity, without fail. And when I entered him, I missed how it felt. That wasn't to say that I didn’t enjoy fucking him. I did. But for those few seconds I felt regret. Every single time.

Once, while we were having breakfast and he was making a list to go shopping, I told him we were low on condoms. He didn’t even look up. “That’s your job.” And that was the last time we ever talked about it. 

Other things changed as well. Over time, I saw a gradual change in Justin’s attitude towards Naomi. Until now, it had sometimes felt like the two of them were co-conspirators, sticking together against anyone who tried to keep them apart, the world in general and me in particular. Now, some of that feeling seemed to be missing. He still looked after her with great care, but he had stopped talking to her so much. 

At first, I was pleased. He had been altogether too focused on the child. It was like an obsession. But there was something not quite right about the way he handled her and for a while I couldn’t work out what exactly was bothering me about it. Then I realized that he wasn’t spending any less time with her, he just enjoyed it less. And he was still just a step away from exhaustion most of the time. 

What I did enjoy was his renewed sexual appetite. He would pounce on me as soon as I came in the door after work, or really at any time. Now, I'd never been one to turn down sex when it was offered on a platter and I most certainly didn't turn down Justin, but there was a strange desperation about it that set me on edge. In a sense, I could understand it. It seemed that the only time we were close nowadays was when we were fucking. So we did. A lot.

 

 

In September, I went to Toronto for Gus’s birthday. Justin stayed home. We didn't have a passport for Naomi yet, because Justin wanted to wait until the adoption would come through so that she could take his name. He'd decided on Naomi Rose Chanders-Taylor. I thought it was a good choice. However much Daphne might have wanted her middle name to be Justine, for whatever reasons, I was convinced she would have been happy to have her surname connected to Justin’s, and the Chanders were happy, too. I still wasn’t in any great rush to adopt her anyway and even if I had been, I didn’t feel any great need for anybody to carry my name. It had never bothered me that Gus was a Marcus-Peterson either.

Not having a passport meant that Naomi couldn’t fly and Justin refused to leave her behind. I suggested getting his mother to take her, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had a dozen reasons why Jennifer wouldn’t be able to, which she nixed with a simple, ”I’d be happy to.” But he felt that Naomi wasn’t ready for that. I thought it was him who wasn’t ready. And then he moped endlessly about the fact that he would miss Gus’s birthday. I refused to talk about it by then.

I left on Thursday night to be there for Gus’s actual birthday on Friday, which was full of his mothers’ lesbian friends and a houseful of pre-teens. Both groups didn’t exactly mix and I stood out the most, belonging to neither of them. In the evening, I suggested to take Gus and all his friends bowling and to a pizza place, for which he was extremely grateful. Lindsay insisted on tagging along and we sat around, supervising and chatting.

She grilled me about Naomi, wanting to know everything from sleeping patterns and development, to our long-term plans, both practical and legal. She came back to how it would affect Gus over and over again until I told her that I would worry about my relationship with Gus and for her to stay out of it. Hell, _I_ didn’t even know what our plans were, I didn’t think Justin did either.

Then she surprised me by telling me that they'd been thinking about having another child. I couldn’t help wondering if that was such a good idea. Things were going well between her and Melanie at the moment, but with their relationship being a little volatile at the best of times, I had to question the wisdom of changing the status quo so drastically. Of course, it was really none of my business, well, not until she asked me to be the father.

“No,” I said without hesitation. “Under no circumstances will I father another child. Ever. I already have Gus and now Naomi. You can forget about it.”

“But Naomi is really nothing to do with you.”

“She lives in my house. I’d say that has a lot to do with me.” It irked me that she dismissed Naomi like that. Even if I didn’t pay much attention to her just yet, which Lindsay couldn’t judge since she’d never seen us together, she was still at the very least my partner’s child and deserved better.

“But this would be your real child.”

It was pretty obvious where this was going, or rather where it was coming from. The woman was so infuriating. We all had our insecurities, but at least none of the rest of us involved our children in combating them or proposed to create another child to do so.

“Lindsay. Gus is special. He will always be special. And no matter how many more kids I might or might not have, nothing will change how I feel about him, how much time I spend with him or how much money I'll spend on him. The only thing that might change is that he might have to share his inheritance when I kick the bucket, but I dare say there will be enough to go round. We are not looking after Naomi because we were hankering for a baby. It was just unfortunate circumstances and Justin wants to do what’s right for his best friend’s child. I’m just supporting my partner.”

Her face fell at my snarky tone and I made my voice a bit softer and took her hand. “Nothing will ever change the fact that you're the mother of my child. You will always have that special place in my life, Wendy.”

She smiled. It was always better to appease Lindsay than to confront her and put her in her place. What made me sad about it was that our relationship had come to this, where I treated her with affection not just because I felt it, but also because I was manipulating her. However, she was happy for the rest of the weekend and that was good for everyone. When I mentioned Lindsay’s proposal to Melanie, she just waved it off without any explanation. I took that to mean that it was just one of Lindsay’s fantasies that would never come to pass and resolved to reassure her a bit more in the future to keep it that way. Although, you never could tell with these two. Melanie usually gave in to Lindsay’s wishes in the long run. I was hoping that my refusal to become involved would defeat the whole purpose of the idea.

Gus and I spent a pleasant day on Saturday, just the two of us, going to the movies and to some overpriced arcade-cum-food place and he stayed at the hotel with me overnight before I dropped him back home on my way to the airport.

The whole weekend, I had tried not to think about Justin and had failed miserably. I'd been angry when he had refused to come, but as time passed, I had worried more and more about him. Things weren’t right. His relationship with Naomi wasn’t right. We weren’t right. But I didn't know how to fix it. I couldn’t miraculously love the child just because she was in my house and it obviously upset him that I didn’t. I was relieved to get home for the simple fact that it meant I could keep an eye on him.  

Ten days later, Justin flew out to Washington to attend the opening of his show there. He'd fought it tooth and nail, but in the end, Stefania, his agent, had told him categorically that having a newborn wouldn't wash with the gallery a second time, like it had in August. He would be sued, and as this would mean the end of his career as an artist, she would resign as his agent. Luckily, he had enough sense not to take it that far.

The run-up to his trip had him so tied up in knots that I worked insanely long hours and stayed overnight at the loft a couple of times, just to escape his ranting about the inconsiderateness of the world in general and the art world in particular.

I would have liked to accompany him, to make sure that he actually went – and stayed once he got there – but I had two important meetings on consecutive days, which even as the boss I couldn't shift. Not if I wanted to retain my clients.

I spent the three days that he was away at the loft. Britin had lost a lot of its appeal recently and it had none to begin with if Justin wasn’t there. Naomi went to stay with Jennifer, which suited me just fine. To be honest, I found babies in general incredibly boring. What bugged me about the situation was that he never even asked if I would want to look after her for those three days, that maybe he didn’t believe I could do it or didn’t trust me enough to do it.

When I picked him up at the airport on Saturday, his appearance was worse than ever. He looked like he hadn't slept a single minute while he was away and he was starting to appear gaunt as well. So much for hoping the break would do him good. His mood was happy enough, if subdued, but that was par for the course nowadays. I was all for asking Jennifer to babysit for another night and letting him rest, but he insisted on picking up Naomi before we went home.

The next weekend, I decided that enough was enough and to give him a break. Up until then, I had fed Naomi only twice, changed her diaper only once and never held her unprompted. When she woke us up on Saturday at the ungodly hour of ten to seven – which was good going, incidentally, since she had been put to bed well before midnight – I pushed Justin back down when he started to rise and got up myself.

“I can do it,” he insisted, but he sounded barely awake and was back asleep before I'd left the bedroom.   

It wasn’t difficult to look after Naomi. She was a pretty placid child and didn’t make much of a fuss as long as she was fed and cleaned. Although today, she seemed a little fidgety, probably because she wasn’t used to me. Getting her dressed for the day made me realize that I should maybe take an interest in what she wore. Justin really didn't have much fashion sense. There had got to be better clothes than these.

At weekends, Justin usually came back to bed after the first feed of the morning. It was always a good time for a leisurely fuck, but I decided against doing the same. He needed to rest. I looked after Naomi at lunchtime as well, because Justin still hadn’t surfaced. In fact, he didn't get up until around two in the afternoon.

I would have expected him to be well rested and in a good mood or maybe even a little grateful, but what I got instead was a grumpy complaint. I couldn’t quite work out what his issue was, only that he didn’t like it. It left me frustrated and a little confused. Did he want me to take an interest or not? I knew he hated leaving Naomi with anyone, but I hadn’t thought that it applied to me as well. I wasn’t even so much interested in her as in helping him. It was more about taking pressure off Justin than it was about wanting to spend time with the baby. But she was a child and as far as I was concerned, she had certain inviolable rights of care which I fulfilled because I was worried that my partner was too tired to do it. And then I got criticized for it.

Justin seemed to take it as a personal affront. He groused endlessly that he was quite capable of looking after her by himself. I just told him that I preferred to do this as opposed to him ending up in hospital with exhaustion and lumbering me with her full-time. Predictably, he accused me of treating him like a child and taking his responsibility for Naomi, and even himself, away from him. We argued about being childish, being arrogant, being ungrateful, being emotionally unavailable. It sounded like some rehashed argument from years ago. I'd really thought we were past that.

Apparently not.

There were slammed doors and then I sat in my office and wondered how wanting to help him out could have led to this. When I heard the front door, I walked over to the window just in time to see the jeep’s taillights travel down our long driveway. Fucking great!

I realized that something had to give, but I was at a loss what the problem was. Justin and I talked nowadays but only on his insistence. I would have been quite happy to never talk, to fuck all our problems away and to ignore the ones that couldn’t be tackled that way. Justin was the one who sat me down and told me it was time for a discussion and I trusted him enough to follow his lead in this.

Whenever Justin was the one who had trouble talking, it meant we would most likely end up in serious shit. Justin not talking was a problem in itself. It led logically to the problem remaining unsolved by not talking about it, which meant that it festered until it blew up in our faces. I thought we had reached that point now or were hurtling towards it at full speed. What I couldn’t work out was how the problem seemed to have started with me pulling a little more of my weight with Naomi for a single day. I would have thought he would have appreciated that.

He had got what he wanted, hadn’t he? He had Naomi and he had me. Neither one of us was going anywhere. Maybe he was too tired to think straight, but I'd helped out a bit so he wouldn’t be so fucking exhausted for once. Naomi slept longer hours at night now anyway, so that problem would soon solve itself.

On the other hand, he'd done nothing but look after her for the past three and a half months. Maybe sleep wasn’t the only problem. I couldn’t tell when he had painted the last time or done anything that didn’t involve the baby. Maybe he was going stir crazy. I certainly would have done long before this. Whatever it was, we had to solve this and fast, because the situation wasn’t doing anyone any good, not me, not him and not Naomi. But I just knew that if I brought up the obvious solution, a nanny, he would bite my head off. All I could do was wait for him to recognize that there was a problem.

I tried his cell, but it went straight to voicemail. I didn’t know what to say to him in a message – or at all – so I never said anything. After a while, I realized that I didn’t have the baby monitor and went to fetch it from the bedroom. Once there, I just lay on the bed, smoked and thought about what to do. There were endless possibilities of course, since I wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was.

I called his cell phone again after an hour and got his voicemail again. This time I left a message.

“Justin, cut the crap and answer your fucking cell phone.”

So maybe it wasn’t the most diplomatic way of putting it, but I resented that he'd left the house without a word, assuming that it would be okay to leave me with the baby. While I didn’t mind looking after her when I deemed it necessary for his well-being, I didn't like being taken for granted. Over the monitor, I could already hear her rustling restlessly with the bedclothes and whimpering in her sleep.

Who knew where he'd gone off to and if he was even in any fit state to drive. I could hardly call up our friends and family and ask if he was there. I'd never done that and never would. Although in the past, he'd been free to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted; now him going off meant that I was left holding the baby, quite literally.

As if on cue, Naomi let out a high-pitched wail. It sounded different from how she usually sounded, so I didn’t even waste time on sighing and went to her straight away. She'd been a little sick by the side of her head and was sweat-soaked and damp all over when I picked her up. At first, I was hoping that she had just wet herself, but when I was changing her, I could feel how hot she was and she was crying continuously now. Shit! What was I supposed to do now? The only time I'd seen Gus sick was when he had to go to the hospital.

I took her downstairs and warmed a bottle. Maybe she would calm down if she was fed. While I was waiting for her food, I tried Justin again. Voicemail still.

“Justin. Naomi's sick. I need you to come home or call me and tell me what to fucking do.” At least with Naomi screaming in the background all the way through the message, he was sure to answer it.

I settled on the couch and started feeding her. She seemed hungry enough, but she was so agitated that she kept spitting the bottle out and then noisily complained about something, probably that the bottle was gone. Finally, I gave up and put her on the cushion next to me to try Justin one more time. And if he didn’t answer, I was willing to throw myself on Jennifer’s mercy.

I was fiddling with the cell phone, keeping one hand lightly on Naomi’s stomach, so that she wouldn’t roll off the couch, when she suddenly stopped crying. And then the bottom dropped out of my stomach because, just as I looked back at her, she rolled up her eyes into the back of her head – the whites making a stark contrast to her brown skin – and started fitting.  

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

**PART TEN**

For a few long moments, I had no idea what was happening. I'd never seen anybody fitting before, never mind a small child. Her limbs weren’t flailing, just her whole body shook rhythmically. I called her name a few times and each time my voice was louder and more frantic, however pointless it was. Then she stopped. One moment she was fitting, the next she appeared to be unconscious. Or worse.

I had that familiar feeling of being powerless, of absolute helplessness and of being convinced that this person in front of me was going to die while I could do nothing but watch. My first instinct was to pick her up and shake her awake. But I remembered those cases that had been all over news of babies being shaken to death or suffering brain damage. _Don’t shake her. Don’t shake her. Don’t shake her_. While I would never shake a child in anger, the urge to do so now was almost overwhelming. How the fuck did you wake up a baby if you couldn’t shake her? Was it even possible to perform CPR on a baby? I put my ear to her chest but couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my head.

Frantically, I grabbed my cell phone to dial 911.

_“911. What’s your emergency?”_

“My baby won’t wake up. She had a fit and now she won’t wake up.”

_“Is she breathing?”_

“I don’t know.”

_“Try to calm down, sir. Take a moment to watch her chest. Is it rising and falling?”_

It was the fact that she made feel like an idiot more than anything else that calmed me down a little. Putting my head sideways and level with Naomi’s tiny body, I watched her carefully and took a shaky breath myself when I saw her chest rise and fall steadily.

“Yeah, she’s breathing. What shall I do now?”

_“What’s your name, sir?”_

“Brian Kinney.”

_“Where are you, Brian? I’ll be sending you an ambulance.”_

“We live in the middle of nowhere. The ambulance's going to take forever. _What shall I do?”_

_“There's nothing you can do, Brian. Make sure she keeps breathing and that she's not too hot. And wait for the ambulance. Where are you?”_

“Fuck that, I’m not waiting here for the ambulance. I’m taking her to the hospital.”

_“You shouldn’t be driving. Give me your address.”_

“Listen to me. Are you listening? I'm taking her to Jefferson Medical Center. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Have someone meet me at the entrance.”

_“Sir, this is not how it’s done. You can’t...”_

“I don’t give a fuck how it’s done! Have someone meet me. Jefferson Medical Center. Fifteen minutes.”

I snapped the phone shut and picked Naomi up very carefully. She was still hot, so I removed her outer clothes and strapped her into the carrier seat. Justin always kept it by the front door and I'd cursed it a few times when I had accidentally kicked it. Now, I was incredibly grateful for small mercies.

When I had fitted the seat into the car, I looked at her carefully again to make sure she was still breathing. She appeared to be sleeping, but the last time I'd thought that about someone had been when her mother had lain dead in a hospital bed.

It was maybe stupid of me to drive her myself, but there was no way that I could sit at home waiting for the ambulance to turn up. Even if I hadn’t feared that they might get lost on the way, watching the life drain out of someone again while I could do nothing just wasn't an option. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

While I was driving, keeping one eye on the road and one eye on Naomi, I called Jennifer. At least in the car, I could make hands-free phone calls. For a long time, I had hesitated to put Jennifer on my speed-dial list because it had felt so much like it would make her my mother-in-law, but again small things worked in my favor.

I explained the situation to her, telling her which hospital I was going to and asking her to call Justin because he wasn’t answering my calls. She didn’t ask any questions, which was one of the reasons I'd called her in the first place. You could always rely on Jennifer to be calm and collected.

“Tell him to go to the house first and get the papers for Naomi,” I said before I ended the call. It had just occurred to me that I had no identification on me and no way of proving who I was to her. And even if I'd had the papers on me, my name wasn’t in them. They only named Justin as her guardian.

At the speed I was going, I couldn’t keep my eye on Naomi long enough to see if she was breathing, so I tried to find her pulse while driving with one hand. I thought I could feel something, but I couldn’t be sure. She certainly wasn’t moving.

At the hospital, the emergency department was gloriously signposted. I came to a screeching halt outside the doors and rushed round to un-strap her. When I turned around, a nurse was standing right behind me to take her, barely stopping to ask if I was Mr Kinney. I could have kissed her, I was so relieved. Apart from having people there who knew what they were doing and could give her the help she needed, the fact that the responsibility was taken off me made me almost sag with gratitude.

A security guard came up to us to tell me that I had to move my car, but I never even slowed down as I followed the nurse carrying Naomi inside. I just told him to park it himself and leave the keys in reception. They were still in the ignition anyway.

Inside, we went straight into a cubicle, where a doctor appeared not half a minute later and started asking me a barrage of questions about what had happened, while she removed the remaining layer of clothing and examined the baby. The nurse tried to get me to leave after a few minutes, to go and fill in some papers, but I didn't budge. I couldn’t face sitting outside in the corridor again. Never again did I want to be confined to staring at hospital walls while I waited to hear if the person I had brought in unconscious would live or die. The memories alone made that impossible.

It was hard to watch them stick a tiny needle into her arm, but finally – fucking finally! – she gave a reaction. There was a piercing wail of complaint and then she started crying in earnest. It was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. I took a few steps back until I hit a wall that was capable of keeping me upright. Then I closed my eyes.

When the frantic bustle calmed a little, the doctor turned around to smile at me reassuringly. “She has an ear infection. We're giving her some IV antibiotics and fluids because of the temperature. She'll be just fine.”

“What about the epileptic fit she had?”

“It wasn’t an epileptic fit. It was a febrile convulsion. They happen in some small children when they spike a temperature. Hers was 104.5. I know they're frightening to witness, but they really very rarely have any after-effects. They're basically just a case of the brain overheating and going haywire because of it.”

“But why couldn’t I wake her up?”

“It's common after a convulsion to sleep it off. That’s quite normal. Babies sleep deeper than adults in general. Even though it doesn’t seem like it when they wake up screaming in the middle of the night.” She smiled.

I walked closer to the bed, where Naomi was quietly whimpering, looking tiny in surroundings designed for adults. “Can I pick her up?”

“Sure.”

Naomi quieted when I picked her up and then started to drop off to sleep again. It took me a while to get comfortable on the one plastic chair, taking care that her heavily bandaged arm with the IV line was as comfortable as could be. “What happens now?”

“She’s had antibiotics and something to bring down the temperature. We also gave her something for the pain. We're going to wait until the IV fluids are finished to avoid dehydration. She’ll probably sleep for a while and then you can take her home.”

“Home?” I felt a surge of panic.

“She’ll be just fine. As long as the temperature stays down, there's no risk of this happening again. I’ll write you a prescription.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

The nurse returned with the paperwork, but I asked her to put it on the bed because I knew that it would get complicated as soon as these people found out that I had no parental rights. It would have to wait until Justin turned up. If he turned up.

For now I was quite content to just sit there and hold Naomi. It was comforting to feel her warm and _alive_ in my arms. I needed to have that reassurance just now, as my adrenaline levels slowly returned to normal. So maybe it had looked worse than it had been, but it had felt fucking real. I'd only once before in my life felt so frightened and so helpless. It would take me a while to get over it.

I tried to focus on the relief that it was all over and to forget how it had felt while it had been going on. But one thought came back to me clearly. When I'd decided to drive her to the hospital rather than wait for the ambulance, what had gone through my head had been, _I can’t sit here and just watch the life drain out of someone I care about again._ Not just ‘ _someone’_ , it had been ‘ _someone I care about_ ’. On the drive here, apart from staving off an impending panic and thinking about how it would affect Justin if anything happened to her, I'd also thought that I could not lose her. It was like that unexpected pang I'd felt at the funeral over losing Daphne, only this one was much stronger. So all this time, what I'd taken for pity and a general affinity that any baby would engender, whenever I saw her, had actually been genuine affection.

I shook my head and gave her an amused smile. “Well, well, looks like you got in under the wire, too, as your grandma would say. Good for you.”

When Justin turned up half an hour later, I could hear him before I saw him. He was arguing loudly with the nurses, who apparently didn't jump fast enough to guide him to where we were. Then he pushed the curtain back and rushed in.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine.”

He came over, stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me. I put my head back against his shoulder and finally relaxed.

He looked distraught, very pale and his eyes were red-rimmed. When his mother had called, he'd been at the cemetery, visiting Daphne. He said he'd been worried out of his mind, not knowing what had happened exactly and how things had progressed after I'd called Jennifer. Having to detour to Britin had been difficult, but he knew he might not even be allowed to see her without the papers.

He was upset about Naomi being sick, about not being there when it happened, about me having to go through that alone, about queening out, about not answering his cell... He didn’t let me go for a long time and kept saying how sorry he was until I told him gently to shut the fuck up. He did and kissed me instead.

When the doctor returned, he grilled her until she had explained the diagnosis, the treatment, the medication and the ways to prevent this from ever happening again in minutest detail. Of course, he'd read all about febrile convulsions somewhere and knew exactly what she was talking about.

It took a while to explain what relationship Naomi was to either one of us, even with the papers we had. The nurse looked at me as if I'd been pretending to be someone I wasn’t, when I had at no point said that I was her father. They'd assumed and I simply hadn’t corrected them. When they'd asked me if I wanted to call someone, I had told them that I'd already called my partner. It wasn’t my problem that they had taken that to mean the child’s mother.   

The doctor seemed the most relaxed about the whole situation. She examined Justin’s guardianship papers only briefly, then said that everything was in order, gave us the release papers and the prescription, and sent us home.

 

 

Things would have to change. I knew it and Justin knew it. I told Justin I would call Alistair on Monday morning to find out if I could become a second guardian to Naomi and even adopt her after a while. I never again wanted to have to worry about getting forced away from her because I didn’t have the right papers, but that was just a formality. Other changes would have to be made and they would have more impact.

On Saturday, we both felt kind of drained, plus there was a residual worry about her. What if she spiked a temperature again? What if the medication didn’t work? Both of us kept going to her room to check up on her while she was sleeping. When she was up, she was no different from the way she always was and it was difficult to imagine that there had been anything wrong with her in the first place.

In the night, I awoke three times from dreams that I really didn’t want to remember and had to force myself not to get up and check up on her yet again. Instead I held my breath and listened to the baby monitor until I could hear her breathing evenly. It brought home to me that it might have taken me nearly four months of persistent refusal to become involved, but I finally was as concerned and worried about her as if this were Gus.

On the one hand, it made me frustrated. I could just imagine everybody smirking at me and telling me that they knew it all along and that I was just a big softie at heart. But they were wrong. It hadn’t been inevitable and I wouldn't suddenly start fighting Justin over who would feed her and bathe her. That just wasn’t me. Even with Gus I'd always been happy to leave the bulk of the care to the munchers.

But on the other hand, there was an incredible sense of relief. Since I'd decided to stay here and bring her up, my biggest worry had been that my emotional detachment would cause her more harm than Justin’s love would be able to counteract. I had already vowed to take responsibility for her, financially and otherwise, as Justin’s daughter, but she would have sensed that my heart wasn’t in it. Children were very sensitive to these things. Now, I knew that I could give her more. She had become my daughter, too. I might not ever become comfortable with telling her my feelings – I wasn’t with Gus to this day, nor with Justin – but for me, action had always spoken louder than words. Gus knew without any doubt that I loved him, so did Justin and so would Naomi. I'd never worried that I wouldn't treat her well or even ignore her as she got older, no, my fear had always been that it wouldn't be enough.

“We’re getting a nanny,” I said to Justin on Sunday evening.

We were having a fuckfest of epic proportions, which had started in the early hours of the morning and had carried on whenever Naomi was asleep. We were just resting in bed before the next round.

“I don’t want a nanny,” he said. “I can do it.”

“I know you can do it. That’s not the point. You need to get back to PIFA.”

“What? I don’t have time for that!”

“You will have when we get a nanny.”

“Do I get a say in this?”

“Justin. I’m not cut out to be a besotted dad... and neither are you.”

He looked indignant and I knew I had to head him off before this developed into a full-blown argument, complete with screaming and slamming doors. Justin was a great dad, there was no doubt about that and I told him that. But I also laid out for him how his life had been reduced to feeding and diapers and how that interfered with his career and even his well-being.

Of course, he said he was willing to give it all up for Naomi, but he was already pensive which told me that he was starting to think about what I said.

“This isn't you,” I said. “I know you love her, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be there every minute of every day. It’s killing you... and it’s killing us. You don’t even seem to enjoy it much anymore.”

He was quiet for a while. “I’m afraid that I’m losing you,” he said then and his voice trembled a little. “And when I’m with her now, I feel torn. I want to be with her, but I keep thinking that she might turn out to be the reason that you'll leave in the end. When you fucked that guy, I realized that you were drifting away from me. Or maybe that I've turned into something that you no longer want.” Well, that explained his voracious sexual appetite recently.

“I don’t,” I said and he flinched. I grabbed his wrist before he could turn his back on me. “I want you, Justin. What I don’t want is some imitation housewife who talks about nothing but the baby because he doesn’t do anything else all day. I want you to go out. And I want you to paint. And I want you to get your degree. I want you to love Naomi but don’t obsess over her. Millions of parents go out to work every day and nothing happens to their children. There's no reason why you have to stay chained to Britin because of her. It doesn’t make you any less of a father.”

“I’m worried that you will tell me ‘I told you so’, if I can’t do everything myself. That you'll tell me that you helping me wasn’t part of the deal and leave. That’s why I freaked yesterday. And I’m worried that the authorities will take her away from me. They'll say that if I can’t be bothered to look after her myself, I’m an unfit parent.”

“It takes a lot more than that to become an unfit parent. And we have Alistair if anybody makes any trouble.” I mostly ignored his remark about how I might react. With the way I'd been feeling and behaving recently, it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. At least, the ‘I told you so’ part, even if it had been firmly established that I wouldn’t ever be the one to leave. It was time I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got my act together. It wasn't enough to wait until Naomi was old enough to initiate interaction with me before I paid her some attention. “I won’t leave just because you need a little help.”

His eyes were brimming with unshed tears now. “I feel like I’m letting Daphne down.” Yes, I'd thought it was something along those lines. In all the uncertainty over Naomi, I'd neglected to remember that he had lost his best friend. He hadn't really had the time to grieve properly and he was nowhere near getting over it. But both of us had ignored that fact in the struggle to find a solution for the more immediate problem. I felt like a complete shit for leaving him alone with his grief and for not supporting him with Naomi just to prove my point. He needed more time to himself to work through his feelings. All the more reason to get him some help. I pulled him a little until he was in my arms.

“You don’t. Daphne never planned on staying at home either, remember? She was always planning on being a working mother. Why would she mind you doing what she was going to do anyway?”

“Oh.”

I left it at that. It was never a good idea to put too much pressure on Justin because then he would just dig his heels in. It seemed like he was mulling it over and that would have to be enough for now. There were better things to do in bed than have serious discussions anyway. 

 

 

Two weeks later, nothing had changed. I was still working long hours. We were now right in the middle of campaign finalizations for the Christmas period and that always got hectic. When I came home, the only change was that I no longer felt like an outsider in my own house. I enjoyed my brief periods with Naomi before she went to bed and she took more of an interest in me as well. She was babbling sometimes and she could lift her head and roll over. I fed her once or twice and held her more often and talked to her a little.

Alistair Gordon had advised me to apply for guardianship but to leave the application for adoption until Justin’s was finalized. Three days after I applied, Melanie called to say that she and Lindsay had a letter from Human Services to ask for their assessment of my relationship with Gus.

I waited.

“ _I wrote you a glowing recommendation, of course,_ ” she said. “ _Just in case you were wondering._ ”

“Really?” I chuckled. “How hard was that for you, on a scale of one to ten?”

She paused, no doubt having an acerbic remark on the tip of her tongue, but, in the end, what she said was, “ _You’re a good father, Brian._ ” 

“You’re not so bad yourself.” It was out before I could stop it and I pulled a face, cursing myself. However much I valued Melanie as a parent, and I valued her quite a lot, thinking it and saying it were two different kettle of fish. Melanie and I would probably never reach a point where we would admit that our animosity was a thing of the past. Neither one of us was given to emotional displays and, with our past history, any hint of it made both of us uncomfortable.

“ _I see you at Thanksgiving_ ,” she said, with obvious amusement in her voice. _Bitch_.

Justin had interviewed and vetoed five different nannies and still looked and behaved like a zombie, so I took matters into my own hands. I re-interviewed the women at Kinnetik and struck gold on the fourth attempt. Freya Svenson was second-generation Danish, but she didn't look Scandinavian at all, with spiky black hair, green eyes and a couple of piercings. Hell, she didn't even look like a nanny. But she came highly recommended by a couple of Lindsay’s dyke friends, whose child had just started school. I liked her at first sight, possibly because she wasn’t intimidated by me and then somehow managed to imply that Justin would benefit from getting a better grip on his life. 

I couldn’t remember what his objection to her had been and I rather suspected it had been disingenuous anyway, so I hired her. She might not have had any qualifications, but she spoke three languages and was doing correspondence courses in History and English Literature. Her manner was off-hand and relaxed and she oozed self-confidence. If ever there was a role model I wanted Naomi exposed to, she was it.

Justin went ballistic. She was too young. She had no qualifications. She would teach Naomi to be rebellious. Naomi would grow up to speak Danish. Naomi would end up with piercings. I found the idea of a baby with piercings highly amusing in theory and the notion that Freya would do anything like that ludicrous. We agreed on a trial period.

On the first day she started working for us, I stayed home to give her some support or, rather, to make sure that she wouldn’t get fired within the hour. Justin watched her with burning eyes while she handled Naomi like she'd been around her from birth and ignored him with ease. Yeah, she would do.

I sent Justin to his studio at lunchtime and he reluctantly went but only because Naomi was having a sleep at the time anyway. Later, I went to see what, or better how, he was doing and it seemed like a good idea to distract him from being upset with a good fuck. When we came back downstairs an hour later, Freya was on a blanket on the floor, cross-legged, with Naomi in her lap, singing her some Danish nursery rhyme that involved a lot of arm and leg movements. Justin seemed ready to grab the baby to save her from this terrible fate, but Naomi smiled and cooed happily.

In the end, Freya stayed. Justin probably watched her every minute she was in the house, but at least he didn’t sack her. When Gus came to stay for Thanksgiving, he divided his time between playing with Naomi, riding the new quad bike all over the property with me and having Freya teach him Danish. Justin seemed to calm down a little after Gus gave Freya his seal of approval.

I allocated one of the guest rooms to her, so she could use it for her studies while Naomi was sleeping. It ensured that she was out of Justin’s hair and had time to relax without constant scrutiny. I was further reassured in my judgment by the fact that Mrs Hanson seemed to like her. Freya came four times a week and after three weeks I caught up with her one evening when she was getting Naomi ready for bed long after she should have gone home.

“Where’s Justin?” I asked, sounding casual and trying not to feel any alarm. Would this incessant worrying never go away? He was approaching thirty and I could still not shift these feelings of concern any time he wasn’t where I expected him to be. It was pathetic.

“He’s in his studio,” she said, unconcerned. “I didn’t wanna leave until he came out. I don’t think he can hear her in there and he told me not to go anywhere near his studio. Like _ever_. So I couldn’t give him the baby monitor.”

I asked her to stay a little longer and got changed before I went to see him. He didn't answer when I knocked, but the door was unlocked. He looked surprised when he saw me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Uhm, I live here?”

“Yeah, but only after work.”

“It is after work.”

“Oh my God, Naomi! Where is she?”

“Relax. You know that nanny that you think is totally unsuitable? She stayed on to look after her without any fuss. Would you believe that?”

He blushed a little. “All right, all right. I admit that she’s rather good... and reliable... and kinda cool.”

I walked up close to him and grinned. “Admit that I was right.”

“You were right, oh wise and wonderful one.”

“Admit that I’m always right.”

Justin snickered. “Yeah, not a chance.”

I took the charcoal out of his hand and put it on the table. Then I pressed against him and he moved backwards until he hit a wall. “If you don’t admit that I'm always right, I will fuck you into the wall.”

His hands were already undoing my belt and he smirked. “Is that supposed to be a threat? Because that doesn’t work very w...”

I kissed him and he moaned. I supposed, after staying on for an extra two and a half hours, Freya wouldn’t mind another twenty minutes or so. 

 

 

It was a turning point of sorts. It was the first time in five months that Justin hadn't thought about Naomi for every minute of the day and no harm had befallen her. It gave him confidence to relinquish his responsibility to other people. Bit by bit, he took his own life back. He started painting again, almost every day that Freya was working for us, for a few hours at first, then for whole days. A few times, I came home to find Freya still there, long after her time was up because he hadn't come out yet. She was usually in the room I had given her, studying and just charged us double-time without any complaints. She said she could do with the money anyway, since she wanted to move out of her parents’ house.

After a while, Justin had developed enough confidence in her to leave the house. He ran errands, hung out with Emmett and went to the gym. Once, when I was unexpectedly delayed at work, Freya turned up at Kinnetik because she had an appointment she couldn’t miss and Justin hadn’t returned. We had bought a car for Freya’s sole use by then because we lived so far from Pittsburgh and we didn’t want her and Naomi to be stuck at Britin every day. I felt strangely relaxed about taking the baby from her and working while Naomi was amusing herself on a blanket on the floor in my office.

I suspected that Justin was spending quite a lot of time at the cemetery. Only now, that his focus had been taken off Naomi, did he seem to start grieving in earnest. A few times, I came across him crying, but he always pretended that he wasn’t. I was torn between shying away from his tears and wanting to encourage them. In the end, he sometimes cried at night, in my arms, and we could both pretend that it wasn’t happening because it was dark and no words were exchanged. I just held him until he fell asleep.

Just before Christmas, he took me into his studio to show me a series of paintings he'd produced. They were astounding, without a doubt the best he’d ever done, even though they radiated an almost palpable sadness, or maybe because of it. I supposed people would just pick up on the emotion they evoked, but having known her, I could see Daphne in every single one of them. It was his homage to her. His agent was ecstatic when he sent her the photos of them, but maybe not so much when she found out that he was refusing to sell them. Still, she wanted to include them in the show she was preparing for him.

Naomi started to fit into our lives rather well. Sleeping eight or nine hours a night became the norm instead of an exception. It went a long way to make both of us, but Justin in particular, less tired. The first time she did it, we both panicked a little in the morning and Justin rushed to her bedside to check up on her when she hadn’t woken up after seven hours, only to find her sucking her thumb peacefully.

With Freya in the house several times a week, our lives got a semblance of normality back. Every Wednesday, on Freya’s day off, Justin took Naomi to see her grandparents. He always started with the Chanders and then went to see either Jennifer or Debbie. All three women had developed a strong bond with her, especially Jennifer, who I suspected had been harboring fond ideas of Daphne and Justin together for much of their youth. This was as close as she would ever get to that fantasy. Or to having a grandchild by Justin.

I saw Naomi mainly in the evenings. The more aware she became of her surroundings, the more interesting she became. The first time I came home and saw her sitting unaided on a blanket, I had an unexpectedly strong feeling of pride. She also had a strange affinity to me, focusing on me whenever I was in the room. Justin laughed about that and said she was just like her mother, who, he maintained, always had a secret crush on me. I doubted it, but it was the first time he spoke casually about Daphne, so I wasn’t going to argue.

I had to admit that it was hard for me to walk down Liberty Avenue with Justin and Naomi for the first time. It was different from doing it with Gus and Lindsay. Then, I'd been no more than a glorified sperm donor and Gus had been proof of my virility rather than my domesticity. At the time, I'd been so much the stud of gay Pittsburgh that I was unconcerned about the one or two people who would think it odd. I also had very rarely been around when Gus was Naomi’s age.

With Naomi, the situation was completely different. I wasn’t so much in the scene anymore and the fact that I had a partner and a house in the country had already done enough damage. Parading a child around, who was a permanent part of the picture, would ruin the last vestiges of my reputation for sure. Justin seemed to sense my impending queen-out and when we met Emmett in the diner, he asked him to look after Naomi for a moment and then dragged me into the restroom to give me a blowjob. After that, other people’s perceptions didn't seem to matter so much.

When Gus was born, my love for him had been immediate and overwhelming. It had been a surprise, to me most of all, but it hadn't translated into spending a lot of time with him or even wishing to do so. That had come much later. Only after Mel and Linz had moved to Canada had he started spending his vacations with me and I'd started visiting once a month. In effect, I saw more of Gus after he moved than when he was within easy reach in Pittsburgh.

Naomi I'd felt ambivalent about for a long time and I'd spent a lot more time with her than I had with Gus. One of the main problems for me had been my lack of affection and my fear what that would do to her. I had agreed to look after her because Justin needed me to, because he needed to do it and, bar splitting up which neither one of us was willing to do, it was impossible to do so without my involvement. Therefore, I'd spent time with her long before there had been feelings of any kind. It was the opposite development from my relationship with Gus. But in the end, it didn’t matter. My feelings for Naomi were very different from my feelings for Gus and, I suspected, they always would be. But I didn’t compare. It wasn’t a competition and it would have been like comparing my feelings for Justin to my feelings for Michael. And Gus had been right, my love for Naomi didn't distract in any way from my love for him and vice versa. 

It was all about finding a balance. I never stopped working long hours, but she was usually still up when I got home and I actually looked forward to spending a little time with her. Eventually, she would go to bed earlier and I would have to make time for her if I wanted to see her every day. But for now, it worked. We'd been very lucky to find Freya. She was always happy to babysit, so Justin and I often went for a meal or to Woody’s during the week. The only difference was that we no longer stayed at the loft on those nights.

Twice a month, Naomi spend time with either Debbie or Jennifer, usually from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. That was when Justin and I went out and let off steam. Once a month, I was in Toronto for the weekend, sometimes with Justin, sometimes without and on top of that, Justin had showings to attend, to which I usually accompanied him, like I always had done, leaving Naomi with one of her grandmothers. After Christmas, he even went back to PIFA for two days a week.

And things just worked. It took a lot of planning and a lot of consultations between various parties, but it worked. Justin was very good at coordinating.

I had always maintained that I wasn’t cut out to be a full-time dad and Justin finally admitted that he wasn’t either. But we spent a lot more time with her than I would have given us, or at least myself, credit for and the emphasis was definitely on quality, not quantity. With a nanny who was incredibly flexible and grandmothers who redefined the word besotted, we were never short of volunteers to help us.

Our lives changed but not to the degree I had feared and the changes that were there were good. Unexpectedly, I didn’t completely hate being a father again. What had seemed like a step too far into domestic territory turned out to be no more than my life developing in an unforeseen direction. What else was new?  

Sometimes life threw you a curveball and you just had to step up. I was well aware that I'd taken Naomi on, not because it was the right thing to do or because I wanted to, but for Justin. When Daphne died, he'd transferred his love for her directly to her child, so it had been easy for him to abandon all his life plans to look after her. For me, not so much. My motivation for stepping up had been my inability to remove myself from the situation, namely from Justin, and then my determination to do the right thing once I was there. Somewhere along the way, I'd developed feelings for her which went a long way to put my mind at rest about what my presence in her life would do to her.

Would I have chosen this life for myself? Not fucking likely. Even Justin admitted that he wouldn’t have. It was just that he had needed to do this. Did I miss my old life, the freedom, the lack of responsibility? All the time. But it was a matter of choice. I'd given up tricking because I wanted to fuck raw and the only thing that had kept me from straying was that I loved barebacking more than I loved random fucks. I still missed it, but I couldn’t have it both ways. Likewise, I'd given up much of my old life because Justin needed to care for Naomi. I still missed that, too, but not as much as I would miss Justin or as much as I would hate seeing Justin regret giving her up. Simple choice really.

There were compensations and as Naomi grew up, they would get more rewarding. Life would get easier. As expected, Justin was an extraordinary parent. He compensated for my inadequacies as a father and my occasional misgivings about what my life had become. He seemed to sense whenever I became antsy and frustrated, and Naomi would miraculously disappear into Jennifer’s care for a couple of days.  

Life didn’t always turn out the way you envisioned it. I should have known that better than anyone. Sometimes you just had to take that step, hoping that your foot would land on solid ground. Or that the person urging you to take it with him would be there to catch you. I should never have doubted it.

     

 

  

**EPILOGUE**

Justin came out of the gate in his typical hurried way. Speed-walking, I called it, and it was lucky that my legs were so much longer than his, so that I never had any trouble keeping up with him. He'd been in New York for two days to discuss plans for a new show, which was still some months away. I'd stayed in Pittsburgh because we were insanely busy, preparing for the spring campaigns and I tended to only accompany him if he had an actual showing. It had been strange, being alone in the house with Naomi but not unpleasant. Of course, Freya had been there to look after her during the day.

He rushed up to me and kissed me, not caring about the stares we got and then gave me a heartfelt, “I missed you”, before kissing me again. Only then, did he ask the predictable question. “Where's Naomi?”

“I left her in the car. She was asleep. It seemed a shame to wake her.”

“You did _what_? You left an eight-months-old baby asleep in the car in the airport parking lot?” He looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to panic or hit me.

I shrugged. “I left the window open a bit.”

“That’s for dogs, Brian! Not for babies! And it’s freezing outside!”

I rolled my lips in and just looked at him.

“Brian, go and get her, now!”

“Justin.”

“I can’t believe you did th...”

“Justin. I was joking. She’s with your mother.”

He hit me against my chest with the back of his hand. “Don’t do that. This is just like the other day when you told me you left her in the bath by herself. You'll give me a heart attack one of these days.” Yeah, I'd never seen him move so fast before. It had been very amusing.

I grinned. “But it’s so much fun.”

He shook his head and then he grinned. “So she at Mom’s?”

“Yep.”

“How long for?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Does that mean we have the house to ourselves until then?”

“Yep.”

His grin told me that he was conjuring up the same possibilities in his mind that I had. I grinned back at him. “Wanna make a start in the men’s room?”

I gave him a small head start because there was always the possibility that some upstanding citizen, who'd seen us kissing, would think it his duty to call airport security on us if we headed towards the men’s room together with too obvious intentions. But I only lasted about thirty seconds.

The airport was pretty familiar to us and there was a washroom a little out of the way past the lost baggage counter. Justin had discovered it the year before, when he was scouting the place while waiting for me to arrive from one of my business trips. It had only two stalls, but they were pleasantly big and usually deserted, like now.

He pulled me into one of the stalls with him and kissed me passionately while he was fumbling with my belt and then opened my pants. He sank to his knees and started licking up and down my cock, which was eagerly twitching under his attentions. But today, that was not what I wanted.

“Come here,” I said huskily and he got up and kissed me again. I opened his pants and pushed them down to his knees, turning him slowly so that he wouldn’t fall over, being so restricted in his movements. Pulling some lube from my pocket, I squirted a generous amount on my fingers and prepared him thoroughly, while licking his neck and biting his shoulder lightly.

“God, Brian, will you hurry up,” he said with his forehead against the partition wall.

When I didn’t respond straight away, he looked over his shoulder without turning, first at my face, then down to where I had started lubing my cock.

“Brian?” There was a hint of doubt for just a few seconds.

I smirked.

“You got your results,” he said then, a broad grin spreading over his features.

In response, I bent my knees a little and pushed into him, slowly at first, to give him time to adjust. It was heaven. Six months of missing this had been far too long and I never wanted to be without this again. I started thrusting harder and his hands folded over the top of the wall in a hard grip. Then he moved one of them to start pumping his own cock and as soon as he came, I released my load into him. I pushed against him with a sigh and I could feel him vibrating with silent laughter.

“What?”

“Remember that time in New York, when we got out of the cubicle and those guys gave us a standing ovation?”

At the time we'd been so carried away that we hadn’t even heard them come in. Thinking we were alone, which we had been when we’d got into the stall, we'd made quite a bit of noise. When we got out, we'd come face to face with half a dozen athletes in matching jerseys, grinning and clapping. After we'd got over our surprise – and an initial flash of fear – we had both taken a bow, washed our hands and calmly walked out. Occasionally, the most unlikely people surprised you when you least expected it.

I chuckled along with him.

Justin turned his head a little, so that he could speak over his shoulder. “I love you.”

I was still pressing him against the stall wall with my body and was in no particular hurry to move. I was savouring the moment, appreciating it maybe more than he did because I had everything back that I had missed, laughing and fucking, being inside him without condoms and, most of all, Justin being happy and with me.

This was my choice. And nothing and no one would make me give this up.

“Yeah,” I replied softly.

 

**THE END.**


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